

















Class D103 
Rook . W 57 

Copyright N°_i 2.'t 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSE 























Recent Excavations in the “Valley of the Kings.” — The royal au¬ 
thor of the hymn to Aten (p. 22) was succeeded by his son TUt-Ankh- 
Amen, under whom Egypt returned to the older polytheism. Recently 
Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of this monarch, and its contents 
confirm in remarkable degree our earlier knowledge of Egyptian culture. 
The upper picture shows the entrance to the tomb in the center, and about 
it fruitless shafts sunk in the exploration. The lower photo shows Lord 
Carnarvon entering the tomb, February 27, 1923, while visitors above 
await to see what may be brought to light. 






ALLYN AND BACON’S SERIES OF SCHOOL HISTORIES 


THE STORY OF 

WORLD PROGRESS 

CANADIAN EDITION 


BY 


WILLIS MASON WEST 

tr 

SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND HEAD OF THE 
DEPARTMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF MINNESOTA 



ALLYN and BACON 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

ATLANTA , SAN FRANCISCO 




WEST’S HISTORIES 


12mo, cloth, numerous maps, plans , and illustrations 


THE ANCIENT WORLD 
THE MODERN WORLD 
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
AMERICAN HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT 
SOURCE BOOK IN AMERICAN HISTORY 
THE STORY OF MAN’S EARLY PROGRESS 
THE STORY OF MODERN PROGRESS 
THE STORY OF WORLD PROGRESS 
THE STORY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 


COPYRIGHT, 1923 
BY ALLYN AND BACON 



FAT 


©Cl A 760 635 


Nortoooh $ress 

J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co, 
Norwood, Mass., U.8.A. 


OCT 31 *33 

liO l 




FOREWORD 

This volume seeks to present the essentials of both Ancient 
and Modern Progress in compact form suited to the compre¬ 
hension of young students. 

My aim has been to select topics that make the past live 
again and that at the same time form a continuous story and 
prepare best for an understanding of the problems of modern life. 

Willis M. West 

May 1, 1923 


y;C' 


iii 



































. 






A 

” . • 

























■ 
























































CONTENTS 


PAGE 

List of Illustrations . .ix 

List of Maps .xviii 


PART I —THE WORLD BEFORE THE GREEKS 

CHAPTER 

I. Men before Writing.1 

II. Bronze-Age Men in Egypt. 9 

III. Men of the Euphrates and Tigris .... 29 

IV. The Persian Empire. 41 

V. Middle States — Phoenicians and Hebrews . . 46 


PART II — THE GREEKS 


VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 


Aegean Civilization, 3500-1200 b.c. 

The Greeks of Homer . 

From the Trojan to the Persian War, 1000-500 

b.c. . 

Greeks and Persians . 

Athenian Leadership, 478-431 b.c . 

The Athenian Empire in Peace . 

Everyday Life in the Age of Pericles . 

The Peloponnesian War and the Fall of Hellas 


53 

58 

67 

88 

97 

103 

116 

124 


PART III —THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 


XIV. Alexander Joins East and West .... 135 

XV. The Hellenistic World, 323-150 b.c. . . . 140 

PART IV —ROME 

XVI. Land and People. 148 

XVII. The Early Republic, 226 b.c. 157 

XVIII. United Italy under Roman Rule after 266 b.c. . 164 

XIX. The Winning of the World, 264-164 b.c. . . 174 

XX. Strife between Rich and Poor, 146-49 b.c. . . 183 

XXI. The Gracchi, 133-121 b.c. 192 

XXII. The Senate and Military Chiefs .... 197 

Marius and Sulla; Pompey and Caesar 




vi 


CONTENTS 


PART V —THE ROMAN EMPIRE 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIII. Founding the Empire, 49-31 b.c. . . . 204 

XXIV. The Emperors of the First Two Centuries, 

31 b.c.-180 a.d.211 

XXV. The Early Empire to 180 a.d. . . ' . . 219 

XXVI. The Later Empire : Decline and Fall . . 229 

XXVII. The Victory of Christianity .... 237 

PART VI — ROMANO-TEUTONIC EUROPE 

XXVIII. Merging of Roman and Teuton, 378-800 a.d. . 244 

XXIX. Charlemagne’s Empire.259 

XXX. The Feudal Age, 800-1300 . 265 

New Barbarian Attacks; Britain Becomes England; 
Feudalism; The Church; England in the Feudal 
Age; Other Lands 

XXXI. Age of the Crusades, 1100-1300 . . . 294 

The Crusades; Rise of Towns; Learning and Art 

PART VII —AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE 

XXXII. England and France, 1300-1500 . . . 305 

XXXIII. Other European States.313 

XXXIV. The Renaissance.321 

PART VIII —THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

XXXV. The Reformation upon the Continent . . 329 

Lutheranism; Calvinism; Counter-Reformation 

XXXVI. England and the Protestant Movement . . 339 

XXXVII. A Century of Religious Wars .... 348 

Spain and Holland; The French Huguenots; The 
Thirty Years’ War in Germany 

PART IX —FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 
TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

XXXVIII. Science and Trade.357 

XXXIX. Puritanism and Politics in England . . 368 

The First Stuarts; The Great Rebellion and the 
Commonwealth; the Restoration and the “Glo¬ 
rious” Revolution of 1688; the development of 
parties and of Cabinet government 



CONTENTS vii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XL. Expansion of Europe into New Worlds . . 386 

XLI. Despots and Wars.392 

Age of Louis XIV and of Frederick II; the Rise of 
Russia; the American Revolution 

PART X —THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

XLII. France (and Europe) Before the Revolution . 404 
XLIII. The Revolution in Peace (1789-1791) . . 4 412 

XLIV. The Revolution in War Time .... 420 
XLV. Bonaparte and the Consulate .... 432 

XLVI. Napoleon and the Empire.438 

PART XI —REACTION, 1815-1848 

XLVII. Reaction in the Saddle, 1815-1820 . . . 448 

The Congress of Vienna; the Rule of Metternich 
XLVIII. Unsuccessful Revolutions, 1820-1830 . . . 457 

XLIX. England and the Industrial Revolution . . 465 

L. The Revolution in the Lives of the Workers . 473 

PART XII — CONTINENTAL EUROPE REARRANGED, 

1848-1871 

LI. “The Year of Revolutions,” 1848 . . . 480 

In France; In Central Europe — Austrian Empire 
and Germany; In Italy 

LII. From the Year of Revolutions to the Franco- 

Prussian War.492 

The “Second Empire” in France; “Italy Is Made”; 
Making of Germany 

PART XIII — ENGLAND, 1815-1914: REFORM 
WITHOUT REVOLUTION 

LIII. The First Reform Bill, 1832 .... 506 

LIV. Reform in the Victorian Age . . . .514 

LV. Recent Reform: “War upon Poverty” . . 529 

LVI. English Colonies and Dependencies . . . 537 

PART XIV — CONTINENTAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 

LVII. The French Republic, 1871-1914 .... 544 
LVIII. The German Empire, 1871-1914 . . . .559 

LIX. Other States of Central Europe . . . 570 

LX. Russia ..586 


CONTENTS 


viii 

PART XV —THE WORLD IN 1914 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LXI. Science and Social Progress .595 

LXII. World Politics to 1914 .601 

Encroachments upon Africa and Asia; Japan; 
China; European Alliances; International Arbi¬ 
tration 

PART XVI —THE WORLD WAR 

LXIII. The Conflagration Bursts Forth . . .621 

The Balkans; Germany Wills the War 

LXIV. Four Years of War .631 

LXV. Since the War .651 

Appendix — A Select List of Books on World History for Schools 

and Teachers ....... ... 1 

Index.9 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Recent Excavations in the “ Valley of the Kings.” Frontispiece 

PAGE 

1. Flint Fist-hatchet of Old Stone Age.1 

2. Ivory Needles of Old Stone Age.2 

3. Cliff Caves near Le Moustier . . . Plate I, facing 2 

4. Mammoth Engraved by a Stone-age Artist. Plate I, facing 2 

5. Stonehenge, Ruins and a “ Restoration ” . Plate II, facing 3 

6. Reindeer Graven on Stone by Stone-age Artist ... 3 

7. Prehistoric Paint Tube. Three views ..... 4 

8. Arrow-heads (Britain) of New Stone Age . . . . 5 

9. Primitive Hoe and Evolution of the Plow . . . . 6 

10. Stages in Fire-making ........ 7 

11. Scraper of Old Stone Age. Two views.8 

12. The Nile and the Great Pyramid. Colored . facing 9 

13. Temple of Horus and Hathor at Edfu . Plate III, facing 10 

14. Hall of Columns in Temple of Ammon, Karnak 

Plate IV, facing 11 

15. Egyptian Capital, from Temple of Ammon at Karnak . 12 

16. Levying the Tax; an Egyptian relief . . . . .12 

17. Egyptian Noble Hunting Waterfowl; a tomb-painting . 14 

18. Pyramids and the Sphinx .... Plate V, facing 16 

19. Temples of Rameses and of Isis . . Plate VI, facing 17 

20. Egyptian Market Scene; a relief ..... 17 

21. Part of Rosetta Stone with hieroglyphs first deciphered . 19 

22. Part of Above on a Larger Scale.19 

23. Rosetta Stone, as preserved in the British Museum . . 20 

24. Egyptian and Roman Numerals.21 

25. Offerings to the Dead; Egyptian tomb-painting 

Plate VII, facing 22 

26. Osiris, Isis, and Hathor (bronze statues) Plate VIII, facing 23 

27. Weighing the Soul before the Judges of the Dead 

Plate VIII, facing 23 

28. Sculptured Funeral Couch, picturing the soul by the corpse 23 

29. Thfitmosis III. .25 

30. Modern Road to Pyramids of Gizeh . Plate IX, facing 26 

31. “ Colossi of Memnon.” Two views . . Plate X, facing 27 

ix 







X 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


32. Babylonian Boundary Stone, 2000 

33. Oldest Arch Known (Babylonian) 

34. Obelisk of Shalmaneser II . 

35. Babylonian Lion (from the “ Sacred Way ”) 

36. Laws of Hammurapi . 

37. Babylonian “ Deluge Tablet ” 

38. An Assyrian “ Book ” . 

39. Babylonian Cylinder Seals . 

40. Impression from a King’s Seal 

41. Persian Gold Armlet . 

42. Reliefs from Assyrian Palaces 

43. Frieze of Lions from Palace of 

44. The Land of Goshen To-day 

45. Vase from Knossos, 2200 b.c. 

46. Palace Sewer at Knossos 

47. The Vaphio Cups 

48. Scroll from the Vaphio Cups 

49. Cretan Writing of 2200 b.c. 

50. Cretan Cooking Utensils 

51. Gate of the Lions at Mycenae 

52. Bronze Dagger from Mycenae, inlaid with gold . 

53. Part of the Excavations at Troy. 

54. Zeus ... . 

55. Ruins of Stadium at Olympia and of That at Delphi 

Plate XVII, facing 

56. Attic Vase of the Sixth Century b.c . 

57. Ground Plan of the Temple of Theseus at Athens 

58. Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian Columns .... 

59. A Doric Capital (from the Parthenon) .... 

60. “ Temple of Theseus ” (so-called) at Athens 

61. Site of Ancient Sparta and the Modern City 

Plate XVIII, facing 

62. Vale of Tempe ..... Plate XIX, facing 

63. Greek Women at Their Music (Scroll from an Attic Vase) . 

64. Plan of the Battle of Marathon. 

65. Marathon To-day. 

66. Athenian Youth in the Procession in Honor of Athene (from 

the Parthenon frieze). 

67. Ruins of the Piraeus Walls. 

68. Bay of Salamis. 

69. The Acropolis as “ restored ” by Lambert . 


and “ Contract Tablet ” 

Plate XI, facing 
Plate XII, facing 


Plate XIII, facing 
Artaxerxes Memnon 

Plate XIV, facing 


Plate XV, facing 
Plate XVI, facing 


PAGE 

29 

30 
32 

34 

35 

36 

37 

38 

39 

43 

44 

45 
48 

53 

54 

54 

55 
55 

55 

56 

57 
60 
65 

68 

70 

71 

72 
75 
79 

84 

85 
88 
88 
89 

97 

98 
102 
103 












ILLUSTRATIONS 


xi 


70. 

71. 

72. 

73. 

74. 

75. 

76. 

77. 

78. 

79. 

80. 
81. 
82. 

83. 

84. 

85. 

86 . 

87. 

88 . 

89. 

90. 

91. 

92. 

93. 

94. 

95. 

96. 

97. 

98. 

99. 
100 . 
101 . 
102 . 

103. 

104. 

105. 

106. 
107. 


. . facing 

Plate XX, facing 


Plan of the Acropolis of Athens 
The Acropolis To-day . 

Sophocles (a portrait statue). 

Theater of Dionysus at Athens To-day Plate XXI, facing 
Parthenon and Erechtheum To-day . Plate XXII, facing 
A Restoration of the Parthenon. Colored . . facing 

Greek Girls at Play (from a vase painting) . 

Plan of a Fifth-century Greek House . 

Greek Women at Their Toilet (from a bowl painting) 

The Wrestlers (after Myron) 

Greek School Scenes (from a bowl painting) 

An Athenian Trireme. 

The Hermes of Praxiteles .... 

Copy of Praxiteles’ Satyr (“ The Marble Faun ”) 

Theater of Apollo at Delphi 
Plan of the Battle of Leuctra 
Philip II of Macedon (from a gold medallion) 

Alexander the Great (two sides of the medallion of Tarsus) 
Public Buildings of Pergamos 
The Apollo Belvedere . 

Tower of Pharos ( Alexandrian Lighthouse) 

Venus ( Aphrodite ) of Melos 
Etruscan Vase 
Etruscan Tombs at Orvieto 
Temple of Vesta (so-called) 

Wall of Servius (so-called) 

A Coin of Pyrrhus 
The Appian Way To-day 
Etruscan Ruins at Sutri 
Excavations at Pompeii 
Coin of Hiero II of Syracuse 
The Discus Thrower (Myron) 


Plate XXIII, facing 
Plate XXIV, facing 


Plate XXV, facing 


Two Views of the Ruins of a Roman Villa 


Plate XXVI, facing 

Pompeian Remains: Temple of Apollo; House of the 

Vettii.Plate XXVII, facing 

Court of a Roman House (Boulanger’s painting) 

Plate XXVIII, facing 
A Roman Holiday, with Procession. Colored (a modern 

painting). facing 

A Roman Chariot Race (a modern painting) 

Plate XXIX, facing 

Views of the Roman Forum To-day . Plate XXX, facing 


PAGB 

106 

107 

108 
108 
109 
112 
115 

117 

118 
121 
122 
124 
126 
128 
129 
131 
134 
138 

140 

141 

142 

143 
149 

152 

153 
155 
162 
166 

170 

171 
177 

184 

185 

188 

189 

193 

200 

201 









ILLUSTRATIONS 


xii 

PAGE 

108. Julius Caesar (the British Museum bust) .... 206 

109. The Theater at Pompeii.208 

110. Augustus Caesar (the Vatican statue) ..... 212 

111. The Roman Forum and a “ Restoration ” (Benvenuti) 

Plate XXXI, facing 212 

112. The Claudian Aqueduct To-day . . Plate XXXII, facing 213 

113. The Bronze “ Janus ” Coin of Nero.214 

114. Detail from Arch of Titus.215 

115. Detail from Trajan’s Column ...... 216 

116. Trajan’s Column (commemorating the Dacian conquest) 

Plate XXXIII, facing 216 

117. Triumphal Arch of Titus (showing also the Colosseum) 

Plate XXXIV, facing 217 

118. Ruin of Hadrian’s Temple to Zeus at Athens . . . 218 

119. Aqueduct near Nimes, built by Antoninus Pius . . . 220 

120. Porta Nigra at Trier (Treves).222 

121. The “ Way of Tombs ” at Pompeii . Plate XXXV, facing 224 

122. The Pantheon To-day . . . Plate XXXVI, facing 225 

123. Cross-section of the Pantheon ...... 225 

124. Marcus Aurelius (the Capitoline bust) .... 227 

125. Views of the Colosseum . . Plate XXXVII, facing 228 

126. Trajan’s Arch at Beneventum . Plate XXXVIII, facing 229 

127. Roman Amphitheater at Nimes . Plate XXXIX, facing 232 

128. Serfs in Roman Gaul. . 234 

129. Imperial Body-guard of Germans (Marcus Aurelius) . . 236 

130. Arch of Constantine at Rome.239 

131. Constantine’s Column at Constantinople . . . .241 

132. Plan of a Basilica.242 

133. Constantine’s Basilica, and a “ Restoration ” 

Plate XL, facing 242 

134. Ruins of the “ Palace of the Caesars ” and Benvenuti’s 

“ Restoration ”.Plate XLI, facing 243 

135. Roman Coins.243 

136. Tomb of Hadrian (as a memorial of the Vandal sack of 

Rome).Plate XLII, facing 246 

137. A Roman Temple at Nimes (well preserved) . . . 247 

138. Silver Coin of Justinian.248 

139. Trial by Combat (two views from fifteenth-century MS) . 249 

140. Seventh-century Villa (wood) in Gaul, “ restored ” by Par- 

mentier.250 

141. The Abbey of Citeaux.252 

142. Saracenic Walls of Jerusalem and the Damascus Gate 

Plate XLIII, facing 254 







ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

PAGE 

143. Court of Lions in the Alhambra . . . Plate XLIV, facing 255 

144. Cloisters of St. John Lateran.257 

145. Seal of Charlemagne.259 

146. Silver Coin of Charlemagne.261 

147. Conway Castle.265 

148. Remains of a Viking Ship.266 

149. St. Martin’s Church (near Canterbury).268 

150. Plowing, from an Anglo-Saxon Manuscript.268 

151. Entrance to a Feudal Castle (after Gautier).269 

152. Bodlam Castle .270 

153. Knight in Plate Armor; from Lacroix.271 

154. Reaper’s Cart; fourteenth century.274 

155. Falconry.275 

156. A Court Jester.276 

157. Medieval Jugglers in Sword Dance.277 

158. The Quintain.278 

159. Doorway of Iffley Church (Norman architecture) .... 282 

160. Battle of Hastings .(Bayeux Tapestry).284 

161. Facsimile of Magna Carta, Sections 39, 40 . 286 

162. Cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral.288 

163. An English Family Dinner (MS of fourteenth century) . . 289 

164. A Byzant.295 

165. Crusader Taking the Vow.295 

166. Siege of a Medieval Town.298 

167. Town Hall at Oudenarde (13th century), Plate XL V, facing 298 

168. Old Street in Rouen; present condition, Plate XLVI, facing 299 

169. A Medieval Cooper’s Shop.300 

170. Workshop of fitienne Delaulne (16th-century goldsmith) . 302 

171. Flying Buttresses, Norwich Cathedral.304 

172. Rheims Cathedral (with explanation of Gothic style) 

Plate XLVII, facing 304 

173. Cathedral at Metz; interior of the nave 

Plate XLVIII, facing 305 

174. A Bombard (sixteenth-century woodcut).305 

175. A Luxurious English Carriage (fourteenth century) . . . 308 

176. Parliament of 1399 310 

177. Guy’s Tower.311 

178. Joan of Arc at Orleans.Plate XLIX, facing 312 

179. Salisbury Cathedral.Plate L, facing 313 

180. Illustration from Fifteenth-century Manuscript (showing 

historical characters).Plate LI, facing 316 

181. Church of St. Sophia, Constantinople . . Plate LII, facing 317 

182. Hall of the Clothmakers’ Gild at Ypres.318 































XIV 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


183. Ca cTOro at Venice and Ducal Palace . Plate LIII, facing 

184. St. Mark’s, Venice .... Plate LIV, facing 

185. Erasmus (Holbein). 

186. Columbus before Isabella (Brozik). Colored . facing 

187. Monk Teaching the Globe (thirteenth century) . 

188. St. Peter’s, Rome: exterior and interior views . Plate LV 

189. Luther’s Defiance at Worms (Von Werner) .... 

190. Luther’s Room in the Wartburg. 

191. Charles V at Muhlberg . . Plate LVI, facing 

192. Village Maypole Festival, sixteenth century 

193. Sir Thomas More (Ruben’s copy of Holbein’s portrait) 

194. English Abbeys, Tintern and Tewksbury, Plate LVII, facing 

195. Kenilworth Castle, 1620 and To-day . Plate LVIII, facing 

196. Shakespere’s Theater, The Globe . . . . . 

197. Queen Elizabeth at the Tilbury Rally. 

198. Francis Drake Knighted by Queen Elizabeth 

199. Dutch Windmills ........ 

200. Henry IV of France, with his children Plate LIX, facing 

201. Richelieu on the Mole at La Rochelle . Plate LX, facing 

202. Death of Gustavus Adolphus . . Plate LXI, facing 

203. Rheinstein, a Medieval Castle on the Rhine. Colored 

204. Ruins of a Rhine Castle — above a modern town 

205. Charles I of England (Van Dyck) . Plate LXII, facing 

206. Oliver Cromwell Visiting John Milton (David Neal) 

Plate LXIII, facing 

207. Charles I’s Attempt to Seize the Five Members in the Com¬ 

mons (Copley) ..... Plate LXIV, facing 

208. Cromwell in Armor (Robert Walker’s life portrait) 

Plate LXV, facing 

209. Trial of Charles I Plate LXVI, facing 

210. Great Seal of the English Commonwealth .... 

211. Blake’s Victory over Von Tromp ..... 

212. White’s Chocolate House in London (Hogarth) 

Plate LXVII, facing 

213. House of Commons (Hogarth, in 1730) .... 

214. La Salle Taking Possession of the Mississippi Valley for 

France (Marchand) . . * 

215. Facsimile Title Page from Hakluyt’s Voyages 

Plate LXVIII, facing 

216. Page from the New England Primer of 1680 

217. The French in Heidelberg (horrors of Louis XIV’s Wars) 

Plate LXIX, facing 

218. Louis XIV and the Great Cond6 . Plate LXX, facing 


PAGE 

322 

323 

323 

326 

326 

328 

331 

332 
334 
336 

341 

342 

343 

344 

345 
349 

351 

352 

353 

354 

359 

360 

372 

373 

376 

377 

378 

379 

380 

384 

385 

387 

389 

390 

392 

393 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


XV 


219. St. Basil’s, Moscow .... Plate LXXI, facing 

220. The Great Elector Welcoming Fugitive Huguenots 

Plate LXXII, facing 

221. The Last Rally of Tippoo Sahib . Plate LXXIII, facing 

222. Crossed Swords of Prescott and Linzee .... 

223. Voltaire (Houdon’s bust). 

224. Gardens and Palace at Versailles . Plate LXXIV, facing 

225. French Peasant Risings in 1789 . Plate LXXV, facing 

226. Fall of the Bastille (Prieur). 

227. Rouget De Lisle Singing the Marseillaise for the First Time . 

Plate LXXVI, facing 

228. Bonaparte at Areola. 

229. Bonaparte Dissolves the Assembly ..... 

230. The Vendome Column. 

231. Napoleon in 1811. 

232. Rising of Prussia against Napoleon in 1813 .... 

233. The Retreat from Moscow (Verestchagin) 

Plate LXXVII, facing 

234. The Congress of Vienna (Isabey) Plate LXXVIII, facing 

235. Napoleon at Waterloo (Steuben) Plate LXXIX, facing 

236. Napoleon aboard the Bellerophon . 

237. The Duke of Wellington. 

238. A Paris Barricade in 1830 (Georges Cain) 

Plate LXXX, facing 

239. A Spinning Wheel in a Swiss Home. 

240. A Primitive Loom — in use in Japan ..... 

241. Farm Tools, 1800 and To-day . . Plate LXXXI, facing 

242. Modern Textile Machinery . . Plate LXXXII, facing 

243. An Early Cotton Gin . . .. 

244. Steam Navigation — the Clermont and the Britannic 

Plate L XXXIII, facing 

245. New York City — to show effect of steel in architecture 

Plate LXXXIV, facing 

246. Harvesting in 1831 and To-day . Plate LXXXV, facing 

247. Steel Works in Pueblo, Colorado. 

248. Louis Napoleon’s Landing at Boulogne (Deutsch) 

249. Joseph Mazzini ......... 

250. A View of Paris .... Plate LXXXVI, facing 

251. u France is Tranquil ” ( Harper’s Magazine ) 

252. Cavour (Desmaisons). 

253. Garibaldi. 

254. Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles (Von 

Werner).. 


396 

397 
399 
401 
409 

414 

415 
415 

424 

433 

434 
440 
442 
446 

446 

450 

451 

452 
459 

462 

467 

468 

468 

469 

469 

470 

471 
476 
478 
485 
490 
492 
494 
497 
499 

504 






XVI 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


255. The Parliament Buildings, London Plate LXXXVII, facing 

256. A Polling Scene (Hogarth’s “Humors of a Country Elec¬ 

tion”) .Plate LXXXVIII, facing 

257. Canvassing for Votes in “ Guzzledown ” (Hogarth’s “Humors 

of a Country Election ”). 

258. Queen Victoria. 

259. Westminster Abbey . . Plate LXXXIX, facing 

260. Sir Robert Peel Speaking for the Repeal of the Corn Laws 

Plate XC, facing 

261. Disraeli. 

262. Gladstone. 

263. Canadian Parliament Buildings at Ottawa 


Plate XCI, facing 

264. Railroad Station at Bombay, India . Plate XCII, facing 

265. Taj Mahal. Colored. facing 

266. Gambetta Arousing the French Provinces against Prus¬ 

sian Invasion in 1871 .. 


267. Bismarck Dictating Terms to Thiers . 

268. Destruction of the Vendome Column by Communards 

269. Bismarck, after dismissal from office. 

270. Gibraltar.Plate XCIII, facing 

271. Palais de Justice, Brussels . . . Plate XCIV, facing 

272. A Norwegian Fjord — Sogndal ...... 


273. Mount Blanc and Chamonix . . Plate XCV, facing 

274. The Kremlin, Moscow . . . Plate XCVI, facing 

275. Forging a Railway Car Axle ...... 

276. The DeWitt Clinton (1831) and a Modern Electric Loco- 


277. 

278. 

279. 

280. 
281. 
282. 


motive. 

Two Views of the Panama Canal 
Hasedera Temple, Japan 
The Walls of Peking . 
Constantinople and the Golden Gate 
The Christ of the Andes 


. Plate XCVII, facing 
Plate XCVIII, facing 
. Plate XCIX, facing 
. Plate C, facing 
Plate Cl, facing 
Plate CII, facing 


Copocabana and the Harbor of Rio de Janeiro 

Plate CIII, facing 


283. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 . 

284. Windsor Castle. Colored. facing 

285. World War Scenes: French Infantry in Action, and a 

French “ Dugout ” .... Plate CIV, facing 

286. Rheims Cathedral in Flames from German Shells 


Plate CV, facing 

287. World-War Scenes: Review of French Troops; Range 
Finding.Plate CVI, facing 


PAGE 

506 

507 

508 

519 

520 

521 
524 
528 

538 

539 

540 

544 

545 
547 
567 

576 

577 
580 
582 
588 
596 

596 

597 
606 
607 
614 
618 

619 

622 

630 

633 

640 

641 




ILLUSTRATIONS 


XVII 


288. Ferdinand Foch ..... Plate CVII, facing 646 

289. General Haig.. 647 

290. Captured German Guns in Paris . . Plate CVIII, facing 648 

291. Surrender of the German Fleet after the Armistice 

Plate CIX, facing 649 

292. John J. Pershing .. . 649 

293. The “ Big Four ” at Versailles ...... 654 

294. Clemenceau Delivering the Treaty to the German Dele¬ 

gates at Versailles .... Plate CX, facing 658 

295. Lloyd George and Aristide Briand at Cannes 

Plate CXI, facing 659 

296. An Impressive Scene at the Cenotaph in London . . . 668 


MAPS 


MAP PAGE 


1 . 

Ancient Egypt ....... 

„ . 

10 

2. 

The First Homes of Civilization. Colored . 

facing 

18 

3. 

Greatest Extent of the Egyptian Empire 

. 

26 

4. 

Babylonian and Assyrian Empires 

. 

33 

5. 

Lydia, Media, Egypt, Babylonia. Colored . 

facing 

38 

6. 

The Persian Empire. Colored .... 

facing 

42 

7. 

The Empire of Solomon (the Syrian District) 

. 

50 

8. 

Greece and the Adjoining Coasts. Colored . 

. after 

52 

9. 

The Greek World (showing all Mediterranean 

coasts). 



Colored. 

. after 

70 


10. Attica (with special reference to Marathon and Salamis) . 94 

11. Athens . ..101 

12. Growth of Macedonia.133 

13. Empire of Alexander (with routes of his campaigns). Colored 

facing 135 

14. The World according to Eratosthenes (about 250 b.c.) . . 146 

15. Ancient Italy (for general reference). Colored . facing 148 

16. Rome and Vicinity.150 

17. Rome under the Kings ........ 151 

18. Italy about 200 b.c. (showing Roman colonies and roads) . 168 

19. Pompeii and Vicinity in 79 a.d. . . Plate XXIV, facing 171 

20. Mediterranean Lands at Time of Second Punic War (showing 

route of Hannibal). Colored. after 176 

21. The Roman Empire (showing stages of growth, and main 

roads). Colored. after 218 

22. Rome under the Empire (showing walls of Aurelian) . . 230 

23. Teutonic Kingdoms on Roman Soil, 500 a.d. Colored after 248 

24. Kingdom of the Merovingians. Colored . . facing 253 

25. Europe in 814 a.d. Colored. after 260 

26. Fields of History to 800 a.d. .264 

27. The Division of Verdun (843 a.d.). Colored . facing 265 

28. England and the Danelagh (900 a.d.) . . . facing 268 

29. England and France at Four Periods. Colored . facing 290 

30. German Colonization on the East, 800-1400. Colored 

facing 292 

31. Germany and Italy, 1254-1273. Colored . . facing 296 

xviii 



MAPS 


XIX 


MAP PAGE 

32. Dominions of the Hansa and Teutonic Knights. Colored 




after 

302 

33. 

Germany about 1500. Colored 

. . after 

314 

34. 

Europe in the Time of Charles V. Colored 

facing 

320 

35. 

The Swiss Confederation, 1291-1500 

facing 

335 

36. 

The Netherlands at the Truce of 1609 . 

facing 

350 

37. 

Territorial Changes of the Thirty Years’ War. Colored 




facing 

356 

38. 

English America, 1660-1690. Colored . 

facing 

390 

39. 

Prussia at the Death of Frederick II 

facing 

398 

40. 

Europe, 1740-1789. Colored 

facing 

404 

41. 

Europe in 1802. Colored .... 

facing 

435 

42. 

Europe in 1810. Colored .... 

facing 

445 

43. 

Europe in 1815. Colored .... 

facing 

452 

44. 

Germanic Confederation, 1815-1867. Colored 

. after 

454 

45. 

Races of Austria-Hungary, about 1850. Colored 

facing 

486 

46. 

Growth of Prussia, 1815-1867 

facing 

502 

47. 

The German Empire, 1871-1914. Colored . 

. after 

558 

48. 

Africa in 1914. Colored .... 

facing 

603 

49. 

Europe in 1914. Colored .... 

. after 

610 

50. 

World Powers in 1914. Colored . 

. after 

620 

51. 

The Balkan States, 1912-1913 


625 

52. 

The Kingdom of Italy, 1860 and 1919 . 

facing 

632 

53. 

“Mittel Europa,” March, 1918 


643 

54. 

German Lines on the West Front, July 15 and 

November 



10, 1918. 

facing 

647 

55. 

Central Europe in 1919. 


652 

56. 

Europe in 1920. Colored .... 

. . after 

660 








































* 


































. 


































V » 














1 














J e. 


































■ 






























v • 


















* 






■ 
























. 

























■ 































PART I — THE WORLD BEFORE THE GREEKS 


CHAPTER I 


MEN BEFORE WRITING 

The story of man goes back to a time when he was more 
helpless and brutelike than the lowest savage in the world to¬ 
day. His only clothing was the 
coarse hair that covered his body. 

He had neither fire nor knife, — no 
tools or weapons except his hands, 
his formidable apelike teeth, and 
chance clubs or stones. Finally 
some savage discovered that he 
could chip flakes from a flint stone 
by striking it with other stones, 
so as to give it a sharp edge and 
a convenient shape for the hand 
to grasp. This invention lifted 
man into the first Stone Age. 

In Europe the Stone Age began 
at least 100,000 years ago. The 
mighty rivers of still earlier times 
had washed out many caverns in 
their limestone banks. As the 
waters cut down a deeper bed, 
such caves were left dry, above 
the new water level; and they 
became the favorite shelter of the 
early Stone-Age man — though he 
often had to fight for them with 
the ferocious cave-bear. By digging in these caves to-day, we 
find stone tools of the “cave-man” where he dropped them 



Flint Fist-hatchet (six inches 
long) from Kent’s Cave in 
Southern England, found in 
the lowest of several distinct 
layers of deposits. Such tools 
have been discovered in nearly 
all parts of the world. 


The first 
men 


The first 
Stone Age, 
100,000 
years ago 





2 


STONE-AGE MEN 


The 

fire-makers 


Tools of the 
cave-man 


And 

his domestic 
animals 


Hunters, 
not farmers 


on the earth floor — perhaps thirty or forty feet below the 
present floor — and remains of great heaps of the bones of 
the animals he ate. 

In almost the lowest deposits many pieces of charred bone 
and wood, and some solid layers of ashes, show that men 
learned to use fire soon after reaching the Stone Age. With 
their stone knives , they could shape sticks so as to make fire 
by friction. With his knife, too, the cave-man could remove 
the hides from the animals he killed; and while he dozed by 
the fire after gorging on their flesh, his cave-woman worked 
on these skins with stone scrapers. Then when they were 
cleaned and dried and softened, she sewed them into clothing 
with bone needles. The early deposits contain no spindles, 
with which thread could have been spun from vegetable fiber, 
and so these needles must have been threaded with finely di¬ 
vided sinew, such as the Eskimo woman uses to-day. 

As we examine the layers of deposits f rom the bottom upward , 
we find better tools and more kinds of them, until we have a 

great variety of shapely 
flint knives, spear-heads, 
daggers, scrapers, chisels, 
and drills fine enough to 
make the delicate eyes in 
the bone needles. Toward 
the close of the age, the 
cave dwellers learned to 
make clay pots, in which to cook their food in new ways, and 
to make earthenware lamps, with wicks swimming in fat. 
Next, bone and stone arrow-heads show that the bow had been 
invented, to lengthen man’s arm. Man began, too, to make 
living animals serve him. He tamed the young of wolf or 
jackal into the first dog; and his drawings show that he taught 
the reindeer to draw his sled. 

But through all their tens of thousands of years, the Chipped 
Stone men were hunters merely. They never learned to farm. 
Besides the animals they killed, they had for food only the 
nuts and roots and seeds the women and children gathered. 



Ivory Needles of the Stone Age- Europe 
had no better needles until some three 
hundred years ago- 











PLATE I 




Above. — Cliff Caves on the Vez6re, overlooking the modern village Le 
Moustier in Southern France. From some of the caves whose dark 
mouths show in this cut have come the oldest remains pictured in this 
book. One can make out two terraces. The second of these also is 
rich in remains, because here the ancient hunters had a station, out in 
the sun, to fashion their flint weapons. More than 150 of these cave 
homes have been discovered in France and Spain. — From Osborn’s Men 
of the Old Stone Age. 

Below- — Mammoth engraved by an Old Stone Age artist on a piece of 
ivory tusk. Found in a cave in Southern France. — From Parkyn’s Pre¬ 
historic Art. The student should examine that work, or Mr. Osborn’s 
book referred to above, for Cave-Men drawings of the Saber-Toothed Tiger 
and of the Cave-Bear, and especially for the colored representations of 
Stone Age paintings, such as cannot be adequately reproduced in a book 
of this kind. The Stone Age remains in the caves show that the men of 
that day feasted upon these and other animals now long extinct in Europe. 








PLATE II 




Stonehenge. — From Barclay’s Buried Temple. Above are pictured the 
ruins as they stand to-day. Below is Barclay’s “ restoration.” Stone¬ 
henge was a “ temple ” of the New-Stone men on what is now Salisbury 
Plain in South England. Two miles away is the site of a Stone-Age 
town, and near by the traces of an ancient two-mile race course, where, 
no doubt, shouting multitudes jostled one another. Some of these huge 
blocks (undressed stone) are 30 feet high, and must weigh two hundred 
tons. This is only the most famous of many such ruins left by the New- 
Stone men in western Europe. 









LIFE AND THOUGHTS 


3 



Their homes were littered with loathsome heaps of rotting 
refuse. Their numbers must have been scanty, but it seems 
probable that in places they had learned to combine into 
groups somewhat larger than the family. 

No doubt the early groups often drifted slowly north or 
south with the seasons, in pursuit of their food. If two dif¬ 
ferent sorts of men met in such wanderings, they probably 
fought one another savagely — possibly even hunting one 


Reindeer graven on stone by a Stone-Age artist. Note the remarkable 
spirit and accurate detail. The drawing isj full life size. From a cave 
in Southern France — where the reindeer has been extinct for many 
thousand years. 

another’s children for food. The terrifying tales of giants 
and goblins among all primitive peoples have some such 
origin. 

The earliest cave-man must have believed in a life after death; 
for he buried the bodies of those he loved and honored under 
the hearth before which they had rested in life, and in the 
shallow grave he placed food and precious weapons ready for 
use when the dead should awake in the spirit world. The 
cave-man, too, had a keen interest in the world about him , and 


Ideas of a 
future life 




4 


STONE-AGE MEN 


Cave-artists 


The second 
Stone Age 


felt much of its beauty. In stormy seasons he amused him¬ 
self by carving on the walls of his cavern or on flat bones. 
With amazing accuracy he reproduced the fierce wild-boar in 
the charge, the mare nourishing her foal, a herd of deer brows¬ 
ing by a peaceful pool, and countless other animal forms. As 
Kipling writes, — 

“Later he pictured an aurochs — later he pictured a bear — 
Pictured the saber-toothed tiger dragging a man to his lair — 
Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone — 
Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone.” 



Finally, some ten thousand years ago, some ingenious 
barbarian discovered that he could grind his stone knife with 

certain stones, 
and so get keener 
edge and sharper 
point thanmerely 
by chipping at 
it. This inven¬ 


tion began a new 
era. The “Old 


Views of a Prehistoric Paint Tube, of reindeer bone. 
Found, with ocher still in it, in a cave in France. 
The cave-artist ground fine the red oxide of iron and 
other clays and packed them in hollow horns, from 
which to color his drawings. (Cf. legend for the 
Mammoth after page 2.) — From Parkyn’s Prehistoric 
Art. 


Stone Age,” or 
age of chipped 
stone, gave way 
to the “New 
Stone Age.” 
The ground im- 
pl ements are 
more beautiful in 
finish than those 


of the older age, and much more effective. 

The New-Stone men made gains more rapidly than had 
been possible to their predecessors. They soon became herds¬ 
men, with cows, asses, sheep, and goats; and some races 
among them grew into farmers. Seeds gathered by the women 
for food must often have dropped near the home, and some 
of these must now and then have grown into plants and produced 
new seed. The convenience of so gathering seeds at the door, 










AND WHAT THEY GAVE US 


5 


instead of searching for them through the forest, would suggest 
to some thoughtful woman the idea of “planting” seed, and 
finally of preparing a patch of ground by stirring it with a 
crooked stick. Such a woman with 
such a “hoe ” was probably the first 
“farmer.” 

Thousands of farmers, even in a 
rude stage of agriculture, can live in 
a territory that could furnish food for 
only a few score of hunters; and so 
the New-Stone “barbarians” dwelt no 
longer in isolated caves, but in villages 
and towns of simple one-room huts of 
clay or wood. With their improved 
weapons they conquered widely, espe¬ 
cially among the backward tribes that 
had remained in the “savagery” of 
the Chipped Stone Age; and so they 
formed larger societies with some trade 
between one and another. 

Now that captives could be used 

to watch herds and till the soil, the 

vanquished in war were no longer killed 

or tortured to death as formerly, but 

were merely made slaves. And as the 

growing populations called for larger 

grain fields than women could till with 

their stick “ hoes,” the hoe handle was 

enlarged into a “beam” to which Arrow-heads of the New 
, , , , i Stone Age in Britain. 

cows could be harnessed, and two new 

handles were added to guide the “ plow .” In regions not 
particularly fitted for agriculture, the New-Stone men some¬ 
times turned to the life of nomadic herdsmen. These nomads 
were less numerous than the farmer folk, and more thinly 
scattered. But they were more suited to war and they were 
particularly inclined at times, issuing from the desert regions 
or the steppes, to raid the richer farmer folk — and sometimes 



The first 
farmers 


Beginning of 
trade 





6 


STONE-AGE MEN 


The Age of 
Copper in 
the Nile 
valley 


The Bronze 
Age 


to conquer and settle among them. Much of primitive man’s 
life went to such wars. 

The next great advance was begun, not in Europe, but in 
the Nile valley in Africa. Pieces of malachite, a kind of copper 
ore, are found there in a loose state. No doubt many a camp¬ 
fire melted (“reduced”) the metal from such scattered stones 
into shining copper globules; and finally some observant 



Pbimitive Hoe and Plow. — From early Egyptian monuments. 


hunter found that the bright metal could be worked more 
easily than stone, and into better tools. So men passed from 
the Stone Age to the Age of Metals, about seven thousand years 
ago. 

Copper implements, it is true, were soft, and soon lost their 
edge; but before long, perhaps again by happy accident, men 
learned to mix a little tin with the copper in the fire. This 
formed the metal we call bronze. Bronze is easily worked; 
but, after cooling, it is much harder than either of its parts. 
The Bronze-Age men equipped themselves with weapons 
of keener and more lasting edge, and more convenient form, 
than had ever been known. With these they conquered widely 
among the Stone- Age men about them, and also added greatly 
to their command over nature. The use of bronze entered 
southeastern Europe some 5000 years ago — about 3000 b.c. 
— and spread slowly westward to the Atlantic during the next 
thousand years. 

Soon after the age of metals began, men came to use some 
kind of writing. That invention brings us to the “historic” 
period. The earlier “prehistoric” man, with many other 
gifts, had bequeathed to his successors, and to us, four supreme 
contributions. 






AND WHAT THEY GAVE US 7 

1. The use of fire made it possible to advance beyond raw 
food and finally beyond stone tools. All wild animals fear 
flame; but the Stone-Age man had come to know it for his 
truest friend. The methods of making fire which are pictured 
on this page (below) were all invented by prehistoric man; 




Some Stages in Fire-making. — From Tylor. 

and no other way was known, except striking two stones to¬ 
gether, down to very recent times. 

2. Most of the domestic animals familiar to us in our barn¬ 
yards were tamed by prehistoric man in the Old World. 

3. Wheat, barley, rice, and nearly all our other important 
food grains and garden vegetables, were selected from the myriads 
of wild plants, and cultivated and developed. Modern science 

, has failed to find one other plant in the Old World so useful 
to man as these which prehistoric man there selected. Their 
jFonly rivals are the potato and maize (“corn”), which the Stone- 
Age men in America had learned to cultivate. 

4. The invention of writing multiplied the value of language. 
Writing is an “artificial memory,” and it also makes it possible 
for us to speak to those who are far away, and even to those not 
yet born. Many early peoples used a picture writing such as 
is common still among North American Indians. In this kind 
of writing, a picture represents either an object or some idea 
connected with that object. A drawing of an animal with 
wings may stand for a bird or for flying; or a character like 
this O stands for either the sun or for light. In our Arabic 
numerals, especially in I.Z.3,5, we can still see the one, two, 
three, or five lines that stood for numbers. 




Contribu¬ 
tions from 
prehistoric 
man 


The inven¬ 
tion of writ¬ 
ing 








8 


STONE-AGE MEN 


The rebus 
stage of 
writing 


Vastly important is the advance to a rebus stage of writing . 
Here a symbol has come to have a sound value wholly apart 
from the original object, as if the symbol O above were used 
with D (D O) to make the word delight. This representation 
of syllables by pictures of objects is the first, stage in sound 
writing, as distinguished from picture writing proper. 

Finally, some of these characters are used to represent not 
whole syllables, but single sounds. Such a character we call 
a letter. If these letters are kept, and all other characters 
dropped, we have a true alphabet. Picture writing, such as that 
of the Chinese, requires many thousand symbols. Several 
hundred characters are necessary for even simple syllabic writing. 
But a score or so of letters are enough for an alphabet. 


Students will enjoy any of the following books: Myres’ Dawn of His¬ 
tory , 13-28; Clodd’s Story of Primitive Man, 35-76; Clodd’s Story of 
the Alphabet; Holbrook’s Cave, Mound, and Lake Dwellers; Waterloo’s 
Story of Ah (fiction). A very interesting larger book, handsomely illus¬ 
trated, is Solas’ Ancient Hunters. 



Flint Scraper, front and back, found in the lower deposits of the cave of 
Le Moustier in Southern France, one of the oldest homes of man- — 
From Parkyn’s Prehistoric Art. 










The Nile and the Great Pyramid 








CHAPTER II 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 

Egypt is the gift of the Nile. — Herodotus. 

By the map, Ancient Egypt is as large as Alberta, but seven The Nile 
eighths of it is only a sandy border to the real Egypt. That and Egypl 
real Egypt is smaller than Nova Scotia, and consists of the valley 
of the Nile and of its delta. 

The valley proper forms Upper Egypt. It is a strip of rich soil 
about 600 miles long and 20 miles wide — a slim oasis between 
parallel ranges of desolate limestone hills which once formed the 
banks of a mightier Nile. While yet a hundred miles from the 
sea, the narrow valley broadens suddenly into the delta,— a 
squat triangle resting on a two-hundred mile base of marshy 
coast. This Lower Egypt has been built up out in the sea from 
the mud carried there by the river. 

And the Nile keeps Egypt alive. Rain falls rarely in the val¬ 
ley ; and toward the close of the eight cloudless months between 
the annual overflows, there is a short time when the land seems 
gasping for water. Then the river begins to rise (in July), 
swollen by tropical rains at its upper course in distant Abyssinia; 
and it does not fully recede into its regular channel until Novem¬ 
ber. During the days while the flood is at its height (some 
thirty feet above the ordinary level), Egypt is a sheet of turbid 
water, spreading between two lines of rock and sand. The 
waters are dotted with towns and villages, and marked off 
into compartments by raised roads, running from town to 
town. As the water retires, a thin but rich loam dressing, 
brought down from the hills of Ethiopia, is left spread over 
the fields, renewing their wonderful fertility from year to 
year; while the long soaking supplies moisture to the soil 
for the dry months to come. 

9 


10 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 


The first 
Egyptians 


The 

Nile makes 
for union 


The oldest records yet found in Egypt reach back to about 
5000 b.c. The use of bronze was already well advanced, but 
remains in the soil show that there had been earlier dwellers 

in the valley using 
rude stone imple¬ 
ments. Food was 
abundant there, — 
not only fish and 
waterfowl, but also 
the date palm and 
various wild grains. 

The first inhabit¬ 
ants lived by fishing 
along the streams 
and hunting fowl 
in the marshes. 
When they began 
to take advantage 
of their rare oppor¬ 
tunity for agricul¬ 
ture, new problems 
arose. Before that 
time, each tribe or 
village could be a 
law to itself. But 
now it became nec¬ 
essary for whole 
districts to combine 
in order to drain 
marshes, to create systems of ditches for the distribution of 
the water, and to build reservoirs for the surplus. 

Thus the Nile, which had made the land, played a part in 
making Egypt into one state} To control the overflow was the 

1 The word “state’’ as used here and commonly in all works on his¬ 
torical and economic subjects, signifies a people, living in some definite 
place, with a supreme government of its own. Thus historians speak 
of France, Spain, Italy as states. 









PLATE III 




The Temple of the Gods Horus and Hathor (see Plate VIII) at Edfij 
(a village south of Thebes), one of the best preserved Egyptian temples. 
In the first view we look toward the pylon, or entrance (corresponding to 
the triumphal arch of the Romans). The second view is taken from the 
pylon, and shows the ruins of much of the structure. The columns are 
almost as tall as those shown (on a larger scale) in Plate IV* 







PLATE IV 



Ruins of the “Hall of Columns” in the Temple of Ammon at 
Karnak (1500 b.c.)- This temple was a maze of huge halls and courts 
joined by lofty corridors. This one hall had 134 columns in 16 rows, the 
central ones being 66 feet high. The “ capitals ” do not show clearly in 
this cut, but many of them are exceedingly beautiful, shaped like vast 
inverted bells and ornamented with carvings of the lotus in full bloom 
(p. 12). A full company of soldiers might stand upon one of those capi¬ 
tals. (Compare these ruins with Stonehenge, Plate II.) The obelisk in 
the background (carved from a single block of stone) was 75 feet high 
and 8| feet in diameter at the base. The student can estimate roughly 
the size of the columns, and of the reliefs upon them, by comparison with 
the human figure in the background. 





11 


“THE GIFT OF THE NILE” 

first common interest of all the people. At first, no doubt 
through wasteful centuries, separate villages strove only to get 
each its needful share of water, without attention to the needs 
of others. The engravings on early monuments show neigh¬ 
boring villages waging bloody wars along the dikes, or on the 
canals, before they learned the costly lesson of cooperation. 

Such hostile action, cutting the dams and destroying the reser¬ 
voirs year by year, was ruinous. From an early period, men 
in the Nile Valley must have felt the need of agreement and of 
political union — as men the world over are beginning to feel 
it now. 

Accordingly, before history begins, the multitudes of villages 
had combined into about forty petty states. Each one ex¬ 
tended from side to side of the valley and a few miles up and 
down the river; and each was ruled by a “ king. ” Then the 
same forces which had worked to unite villages into states 
tended to combine the many small states into a few larger ones. 

After centuries of conflict, Menes, prince of Memphis, united the 
petty principalities around him into one kingdom (3400 b.c.). 

The king was worshiped as a god by the mass of the people. Kings, 

His title, Pharaoh, means The Great House, — as the title of n ° b,es - 

pnests 

the supreme ruler of Turkey in modern times has been The 
Sublime Porte (Gate). The title implied that the ruler was to 
be a refuge for his people. The pharaoh became the absolute 
owner of the soil, in return for protecting it by dikes and 
reservoirs. This ownership helped to make him absolute 
master of the inhabitants also. His authority was limited only 
by the power of the priests and by the necessity of keeping 
ambitious nobles friendly. 

Part of the land the king kept in his own hands, to be culti¬ 
vated by peasants under the direction of royal stewards ; part he 
parceled out among the nobles, who were little kings, each in his 
own domain; and about a third he turned over to the temples 
to support the worship of the gods. This land became the 
property of the priests, of whom a large number lived in each 
temple. The priests were also the scholars of Egypt, and the 
pharaoh took most of his high officials from them. 


12 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 


The 

peasants 


The 'peasants tilled the soil, and were not unlike the peasants 
of modern Egypt. They rented small “ farms,” — hardly 
more than garden plots, — for which they paid at least a third 

of the produce to 
the landlord. This 
left too little for a 
family; and thej 
eked out a liveli 
hood by day labor 
on the land of the 
nobles and priests. 
For this work they 

were paid a small 
A Capital prom Karnak. part of the prod _ 

nee. They did not live in the country, as our farmers do, 
but in little villages or in the squalid quarters of the towns, 
with the other poorer people. 

The house of a poor man was a mud hovel of only one room. 
Such huts were separated from one another merely by one mud 




partition, and were built in long rows, facing upon narrow 
crooked alleys filled with filth. (A “plague of flies,” like that 
described in the Old Testament, was natural enough; and only 
the extremely dry air kept down that and worse pestilences.) 
Hours of toil were from dawn to dark ; but usually the peasants 
were careless and gay, petting the cattle and singing at their 
1 A “ relief ” is a piece of sculpture only partly cut away from the rock. 











CLASSES OF PEOPLE 


13 


work. Probably they were quite as well off as the like class 
has been in Egypt or Russia during the past century. Their 
chief fear was of the royal taxes. The peasant was held re¬ 
sponsible for them with all that he owned. If he could not pay 
otherwise, he “paid with his body” with forced work in the 
canals or in the royal mines. 

In the towns there were a few merchants, physicians, master- 
builders, and notaries (to draw up business papers and so on), and 
a larger class of artisans. At the base of society, even worse 
off than the peasants, were the unskilled laborers, whose condi¬ 
tion was little better than that of slaves. Toilers on the canals 
and pyramids were kept to their tasks by the whip. “Man 
has a back” was a favorite proverb. 

The soldiers were a class by themselves, with special privi¬ 
leges. They paid no taxes, and each one held a farm of some 
eight acres — four times as large as the ordinary peasant’s farm. 
(Besides this professional soldiery, the peasants were drafted 
in herds for war, on occasion, as they were also for other royal 
enterprises.) 

Until the seventh century b.c. the Egyptians had no money. 
Thus the immense royal revenues, as well as all debts between 
private men, had to be collected “ in kind.” The tax-collectors 
and treasurers had to receive geese, ducks, cattle, grain, wine, 
oil, metals, jewels, — “ all that the heavens give, all that the 
earth produces, all that the Nile brings from its mysterious 
sources,” as one inscription puts it. To do this called for an 
army of royal officials, organized in many grades. Each great 
noble, too, had to have a large class of trustworthy servants. 

The son usually followed the father’s occupation; but there 
was no law (as in some Oriental countries) to prevent his pass¬ 
ing into a different class. Sometimes the son of a poor herds¬ 
man rose to wealth and power. Such advance was most easily 
open to the scribes. This learned profession was recruited from 
the brightest boys of the middle and lower classes. Most of 
the scribes found clerical work only; but from the ablest ones 
the nobles chose confidential secretaries and stewards; and 
some of these, who showed special ability, were promoted by 


The middle 
class 


And the 
toilers 

Soldiers 


Officials 


The scribes 


14 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 


Life of 
the wealthy 



the pharaohs to the highest dignities in the land. Such men 
founded new families and reinforced the ranks of the nobility. 

For the well-to-do, life was a very delightful thing, filled 
with active employment and varied with many pleasures. Their 
homes were roomy houses with a wooden frame plastered over 
with sun-dried clay. Light and air entered at the many latticed 


Egyptian Noble Hunting Waterfowl with a “throw-stick” or boomer¬ 
ang. The wife accompanies her husband, and the boat contains also a 
“decoy” bird. The wild birds rise from a mass of papyrus reeds. — 
From an Egyptian tomb painting now in the British Museum. 

windows, where, however, curtains of brilliant hues shut out 
the occasional sand storms from the desert. About the house 
stretched a large high-walled garden with artificial fish-ponds 
gleaming among the palm trees. 

The position of women was better than in modern Oriental 




THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 


15 


countries. The poor man’s wife spun and wove, and ground 
grain into meal in a stone bowl with another stone. Among 
the upper classes, the wife was the companion of the man. 
She was not shut up in a harem or confined strictly to house¬ 
hold duties; she appeared in company and at public ceremonies. 
She possessed equal rights at law, and could own and dispose of 
property; and sometimes great queens ruled upon the throne. 
In no other country, until modern times, do pictures of happy 
home life play so large a part. 

For a thousand years (3400 to 2400 b.c.), the capital remained 
at Memphis. This period is known as that of the “Old King¬ 
dom” Its kings are remembered best for the pyramids, which 
they built for their tombs. The pyramids are merely exag¬ 
gerated developments, in stone, of earth burial mounds such as 
some American Indians and many other Stone-Age men have 
erected for their chieftains’ graves. But the immense size of 
these buildings in Egypt, and the skill shown in constructing 
them, has always placed them among the wonders of the world. 

The largest is known as the Great Pyramid. It was built 
by King Khufu (known till lately as Cheops) more than 3000 
years b.c., and it is far the most massive building in the world. 
Its base covers thirteen acres, and it rises 481 feet from the 
plain. More than two million huge stone blocks went to make 
it, — more stone than has gone into any other building in the 
world. Some single blocks weigh over fifty tons; but the 
edges of the blocks that form the faces are so polished, and so 
nicely fitted, that the joints can hardly be detected; and the 
interior chambers, with long, sloping passages between them, are 
built with such skill that, notwithstanding the immense weight 
above them, there has been no perceptible settling of the walls 
in the lapse of five thousand years. 

Herodotus, a Greek historian of the fifth century b.c., traveled 
in Egypt and learned all that the priests of that day could tell 
him regarding these wonders. He tells us that it took thirty 
years to build the Great Pyramid, — ten of those years going 
to piling the vast mounds of earth, up which the mighty stones 


Position of 
women 


The “ Old 
Kingdom,’ * 
3400-2400 
B.C. 


The Great 
Pyramid 


16 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 


The Middle 
Kingdom, 
2400-2000 
B. C. 


Agriculture 


were to be dragged into place, — which mounds had afterwards 
to be removed. During those thirty years, relays of a hundred 
thousand men were kept at the toil, each relay for three months 
at a stretch. Other thousands, of course, had to toil through a 
lifetime of labor to feed these workers on a monument to a 
monarch’s vanity. All the labor was performed by mere human 
strength: the Egyptians of that day had no beasts of burden, 
and no machinery, such as we have, for moving great weights 
with ease. 

The vain and cruel pyramid builders were finally overthrown 
by a rebellion, and a new line of kings took Thebes for their 
capital. The next four hundred years (2400-2000 b.c.) is 
known as the period of the “ Middle Kingdom.” It is marked 
by the extension and elaboration of the irrigation system. Besides 
caring for the old dykes, the pharaohs now drained tens of thou¬ 
sands of acres of marsh, making it fit for rich cultivation, and 
on the other hand, they built a wonderful system of vast arti¬ 
ficial reservoirs to hold the surplus water of the yearly inunda¬ 
tion— with an intricate network of ditches and “gates” (as 
in some of the Western States now) to distribute the water 
throughout the country in the dry months. With this aid, 
more soil was cultivated, and a larger population supported, 
in ancient Egypt than in any modern period until British con¬ 
trol was established in that country some forty years ago. 

The main industry was farming. The leading grains were 
wheat, barley, and sesame. Even the large farms were treated 
almost like gardens; and the yield was enormous, — reaching 
the rate of a hundredfold for grain. Long after her greatness 
had departed, Egypt remained “the granary of the Mediterra¬ 
nean lands.” Other food crops were beans, peas, lettuce, rad¬ 
ishes, melons, cucumbers, and onions. Grapes, too, were grown 
in great quantities, and made into a light wine. Clover was 
raised for the cattle, and flax for the linen cloth, which was the 
main material for clothing. A little cotton, also, was cultivated; 
and large flocks of sheep furnished wool. 

Besides the plow, the farmer’s only tools were a short, crooked 


PLATE V 




Pyramids and the Sphinx- — The human head of the Sphinx, with the 
magnified features of one of the pharaohs, is set upon the body of a 
lion, as a symbol of power- 





PLATE VI 



Above. — Temple of Rameses at Thebes : first court, south side. 

Below. — Outer Court in front of Temple of Isis at Philae : 

West Colonnade. 











LIFE AND WORK 


17 


hoe (the use of which bent him almost double) and the sickle. 
The grain was cut with this last implement, then carried in 
baskets to a threshing floor, and trodden out by cattle. 

An Egyptian barnyard contained many animals familiar to 
us (cows, sheep, goats, scrawny pigs much like the wild hog, 
geese, ducks, and pigeons), and also a number of others like 
antelopes, gazelles, and storks. Men had to learn by careful 
experiment, through many generations of animal life, which ani¬ 
mals it paid best to domesticate. 

During most of Egypt’s three thousand years of greatness, 
exchange in her market places was by barter. A peasant with 



A Market Scene. — An Egyptian relief. The admirable description of 
Egyptian markets in Davis’ Readings (I, No. 7) is based in part upon 
this sculpture. 


wheat or onions to sell squatted by his basket, while would-be 
customers offered him earthenware, vases, fans, or other objects 
with which they had come to buy, but which perhaps he did not 
want. In the closing periods of Egyptian history, the people 
came to use rings of gold and silver a little, somewhat as we 
use money; but such rings had to be weighed each time they 
changed hands. 

In spite of this handicap, the Egyptians carried on extensive 
trade. Especially did the great Theban pharaohs of the “ Middle 


Egyptian 

markets 


Trade and 
commerce 





















18 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 


Manufac¬ 

tures 


Books and 
writing 


Kingdom” encourage commerce, explore distant regions, de¬ 
velop copper mines in the Sinai peninsula of Arabia, and build 
roads. One of them even opened a canal from the eastern 
mouth of the Nile to the Red Sea, so establishing a continuous 
water route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. 
In that day, Egyptian merchants sailed to Crete on the north 
and to distant parts of Ethiopia on the south. So far as we 
know, the Egyptians were the first men to “go down to the sea 
in ships,” the first, indeed, to build sea-going ships at all. 

To pay for the precious products of distant countries, the 
Egyptian merchant exported the surplus products of the 
skilled artisans at home. This class included weavers, black¬ 
smiths, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, cabinet-makers, uphol¬ 
sterers, glass blowers, potters, shoemakers, tailors, armorers, 
and many other trades. In many of these occupations, the 
workers possessed a marvelous dexterity, and were masters 
of processes that are now unknown. The weavers in particular 
produced delicate and exquisite linen, almost as fine as silk, 
and the workers in glass and gold were famous for their skill. 
Jewels were imitated in colored glass so artfully that only an 
expert to-day can detect the fraud by the appearance. Beau¬ 
tiful bowls and vases, and other sorts of pottery, were worked, 
no longer by hand, but on the potter’s wheel — another Egyp¬ 
tian invention — and burned, not by an open fire, but evenly 
in closed brick ovens. 

The Egyptians wrote religious books, poems, histories, 
travels, novels, orations, treatises on morals, scientific works, 
geographies, cook-books, catalogues, and collections of fairy 
stories — among the last a tale of an Egyptian Cinderella 
with her fairy glass slipper. On the oldest monuments, writ¬ 
ing had advanced from mere pictures to a rebus stage (p. 8). 
This early writing was used mainly by the priests, and so the 
strange characters are called hieroglyphs (“ priests’ writing ”). 
They are a “delightful assemblage of birds, snakes, men, tools, 
stars, and beasts,” used, not for objects merely, but rather 
as sound symbols, each for a syllable. Some of these signs 













'MV' 





































































LEARNING AND ART 


19 


grew into real “ letters ” (p. 8), but the Egyptians never took 
the final step, to a true alphabet. Their writing remained to 
the end a curious mixture of hundreds of signs of things and 
ideas and syllables, and of a few single sounds. 

The oldest inscriptions were cut in stone. But very soon The papyrus 
the Egyptians invented “ paper.” They took papyrus reeds, 


Ki® I rwysttV^rtViSSSs^SKWCHL 

Ti V.mi: a SHnOisTl®^« :£W 

rnkKOissD^f *tr: >:■.m *?i\ 

Part of Rosetta Stone (p. 20) containing hieroglyphs first deciphered. 


which grew abundantly in the Nile, split the stems down the 
middle, laid the slices, flat side up, in two layers, one crossing 
the other, and pressed them into a firm yellowish sheet, some¬ 
what as we make our “ paper ” from wood pulp. On such 
sheets they wrote with a pointed reed in black or red ink. 




SWI'HW 


Part of Above Inscription (last line) on a large scale. That part within 
the curved line (“cartouch”) was known, by Egyptian custom, to be 
the name of a pharaoh, and became the starting point for study. 


The dry air of Egyptian tombs has preserved great numbers 
of buried papyrus rolls to our time. In the rapid writing on 
this “ paper,” strokes were run together, and so the stiff hiero¬ 
glyphs of the monuments were gradually modified into a running 
script, differing from the older characters somewhat as our script 
differs from print. 

Many Egyptian inscriptions and papyrus rolls had long The Rosetta 
been known to European scholars; but until a century ago no ^ tone 
one could read them. About 1800 a.d. some French soldiers. 













20 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 


A key to 
lost ages 


Science 


while digging trenches near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, 
found a curious slab of black rock covered with three inscrip¬ 
tions, each in its own kind of writing. The top one was in the 

ancient hieroglyphics of 
the pyramids ; then came 
one in the later Egyptian 
script (likewise unknown); 
and at the bottom was an 
inscription in Greek. A 
French scholar, Champol- 
lion, who had been work¬ 
ing for years, with small 
success, in trying to de¬ 
cipher the hieroglyphics, 
guessed shrewdly that 
these three inscriptions 
told the same story. In 
1822 he proved this true. 
Then, by means of the 

The Rosetta Stone, as now mounted Greek, he found the mean- 
and preserved in the British Museum. „ . . 

Length, 3'9"; breadth, 2' 4 §"; thick- mg ol the other charac- 
ness, 11". The inscription belongs to ters, and so had a key to 
the second century b.c. See p. 19. . . ... 

the language and writing 

of old Egypt. The famous “ Rosetta Stone ” made dumb 
ages speak once more. 

Egyptian science, too, was “ the gift of the Nile.” After an 
inundation, it was often needful to survey the land, and this 
led to the skill of the early Egyptians in geometry. And the 
need of fixing in advance the exact time of the inundation 
directed attention to the true “ year,” and so to astronomy. 
Great advance was made in both these studies. The 
Egyptians understood the revolution of the earth and 
planets around the sun, and five thousand years ago they had 
mapped the sun’s apparent path (the zodiac) into its twelve 
signs. They had also mapped the stars in constellations, as 
shown to-day in our “ star-maps”; and they had adopted a 





LEARNING AND ART 


21 


“ calendar ” with a year of 365 days, divided into twelve months 
(moons) of 30 days each, with five added feast-days. (Later 
they found that their year was too short by nearly a quarter of a 
day; but the leap-year arrangement which their scholars then 
invented never came into general use in ancient Egypt.) 

They also divided the day into twelve double hours, and in¬ 
vented both a water-clock and a shadow-clock (or dial) to 
measure the passage of the hours. 

In arithmetic the Egyptians dealt in numbers to millions, with 
a notation like that used later by the Romans. Thus, 3423 was 
represented by the Romans: M M M C C C C XX ill 
and by the Egyptians: $ $ ij. ® @ @ @ ri i 1 

Amazing skill was shown in architecture, sculpture, and Egyptian 
painting. Aside from the pyramids, the most famous buildings 
were the gigantic temples of the gods. In these we find the 
first use of columns, arranged often in long colonnades. The 
Egyptians understood the principle of the arch, and they used it 
sometimes in their private mansions; but in the huge temples 
the roofs and ceilings were formed always by laying immense 
flat slabs of rock across from column to column (or from square 
pier to pier). The result is an impression of stupendous power, 
but not of surpassing beauty. 

On the walls and columns, and within the pyramid tombs, 
we find long bands of pictures (“reliefs”) cut into the stone. 

Often these represent historical scenes, the story of which is told 
in detail by inscriptions above or below the band of sculpture. 

The Egyptians did not understand “ perspective,” and so in such 
carving and drawing they could not represent one figure behind 
another, or give the sense of varying distances. All the figures 
appear on one plane, and are drawn on one scale. (Compare 
the reliefs on pp. 12, 17 with the Roman relief on p. 216.) In 
other respects the Egyptian work is exceedingly lifelike. 

In carving complete statues, the ignorance of perspective did 
not injure the effect. The Egyptians, accordingly, excelled 
here, especially in portrait statues, small or life size. They 
were fond, too, of making colossal statues, which, however 


22 


BRONZE-AGE MEN IN EGYPT 


Religion 


Ideas of 
God 


unnatural, have a gloomy and overwhelming grandeur in 
keeping with the melancholy desert that stretches about 
them. 

There was a curious mixture of religions. Each family wor¬ 
shiped its ancestors. Such ancestor worship is found, indeed, 
among all primitive peoples, along with a belief in 1 evil spirits 
and malicious ghosts. There was also a worship of animals. 
Cats, dogs, bulls, crocodiles, and many other animals were 
sacred. To injure one of these “gods,” even by accident, was 
to incur the murderous fury of the people. Probably this wor¬ 
ship was a degraded kind of ancestor worship known as totemism, 
which is found among many peoples. North American Indians 
of a wolf clan or a bear clan — with a fabled wolf or bear for 
an ancestor — must on no account injure the ancestral animal 
or “totem.” In Egypt, however, the worship of animals 
became more widely spread, and took on grosser features, than 
has ever been the case elsewhere. Above all this, there was a 
nature worship with countless deities and demigods representing 
sun, moon, river, wind, storm, trees, and stones. Each village 
and town had its special nature god to protect it; and the gods 
of the great capitals became national deities. 

With the better classes this nature worship mounted some¬ 
times to a lofty and pure worship of one God. “God,” say 
some of the inscriptions, “ is a spirit: no man knoweth his 
form,” and again, — “ He is the creator of the heavens and 
the earth and all that is therein.” These lofty thoughts never 
spread far among the people; but a few thinkers in Egypt rose 
to them even earlier than the Hebrew prophets did. A youthful 
king (Ikhnaton) of the fifteenth century b.c., sought earnestly 
to replace all lower worships with this higher one. He was 
overthrown finally by the priesthood and the superstitious 
masses; but we still have a hymn written by him in honor of 
Aten (the Sun-disk), symbol of Light and Life. 

“Thy appearing is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, 

O living Aten, the beginning of life! . . . 

Thou fillest every land with thy beauty. 


PLATE VII 



A Tomb Painting showing offerings to the dead. The Egyptians decorated 
the flat walls of their tombs and temples, and their relief sculptures, in 
brilliant colors — which in the dry air of enclosed tombs have lasted to 
this day, but which fade quickly when exposed to the outer air. This 
picture shows well the chief article of male dress — a linen loin-cloth, 
sometimes drawn together into short trousers. Nobles sometimes added 
a sleeveless mantle clasped over the shoulder. 



























PLATE VIII 



Above. — Hathor Osiris Isis 

Osiris was the chief god of Egyptian religion — god of the sky and 
sun. His symbol was the bull. Isis was his sister and wife, goddess 
of the sky and the moon. The cow was sacred to her. Horus (Plate III), 
a leading deity, was her son. Hathor was another sun deity. 

Below- — Weighing the Soul in the scales of truth before the gods of the 
dead. -— From an ancient papyrus funeral service. (The figures with ani¬ 
mal heads are gods and their messengers. The human forms represent 
the dead who are being led to judgment.) See p. 24. 










RELIGION AND MORALS 


23 


Thy beams encompass all lands which thou hast made. 
Thou bindest them with thy love. . . . 

The birds fly in their marshes — 

Lifting their wings to adore thee. . . . 

The small bird in the egg, sounding within the shell — 
Thou givest it breath within the egg. . . . 

How many are the things which thou hast made ! 

Thou createst the land by thy will, thou alone, 

With peoples, herds, and flocks. . . . 

Thou givest to every man his place, thou framest his life.” 



Sculptured Funeral Couch, representing the soul crouching by the corpse. 


The idea of a future life was held in two or three forms. Nearly Ideas of a 
all savage peoples believe that after death the body remains the future llfe 
home of the soul, or at least that the soul lives on in a pale, 
shadowy existence near the tomb. If the body be not pre¬ 
served, or if it be not given proper burial, then, it is thought, 
the soul becomes a wandering and mischievous ghost. 

The early Egyptians held such a belief, and their practice 
of embalming 1 the body before burial was connected with it. 

They wished to preserve the body as the home for the soul. 

In the early tombs, too, there are always found dishes in which 
had been placed food and drink for the ghost. After these 
6000 years of different faiths, the Egyptian peasant still buries 

i “ Embalming” is a process of preparing a dead body with drugs and 
spices, so as to prevent decay. The corpses of the wealthy, so preserved, 
were also swathed in many layers of linen cloths before being laid away. 

A corpse so preserved and wrapped is called a mummy. 




24 


ANCIENT EGYPT 


Moral 

standards 


Protected 
from inva¬ 
sion by 
geography 


food and drink with his dead. Such customs last long after the 
ideas on which they were based have faded; but there must always 
have been some live idea in them at first. 

Among tfie better classes there finally grew up a belief in a 
truer immortality in a distant Elysium. This haven, however, 
was only for those ghosts who, on arrival, should be declared 
worthy. The following noble extract comes from the “Repu¬ 
diation of Sins.” This was a statement (hundreds of years older 
than the Hebrew Ten Commandments) which the Egyptian 
believed he ought to be able to say truthfully before the “Judges 
of the Dead.” It is the first record of the idea that a good life 
ought to win reward hereafter. 

“Hail unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of 
Truth and Justice! [Osiris] ... I have not committed iniquity against 
men! I have not oppressed the poor ! . . . I have not caused the slave 
to be ill-treated of his master ! I have not pulled down the scale of the 
balance! I have not taken away the milk from the mouths of suck¬ 
lings. ... Grant that he may come unto you — he that hath not 
lied or borne false witness, . . .he that hath given bread to the hungry 
and drink to him, that was athirst , and that hath clothed the naked with gar¬ 
ments .” Some other declaration of this statement run: “I have not 
blasphemed”; “I have not stolen”; “I have not slain any man 
treacherously” ; “I have not made false accusation” ; “I have not 
eaten my heart with envy.” See also Davis’ Readings, I, Nos. 9 
and 10. 

For the first thousand years of her history as a kingdom, 
Egypt was almost isolated from other lands, except for trade. 
The Nile valley was so difficult to get into that, when a large 
state had once been formed there, it was almost safe from attack. 
To the south were the Abyssinians, a brave and warlike people; 
but they were cut off from Egypt by a twelve-day march 
through a desert and by impassable cataracts in the Nile. 
Trade caravans and small bands might travel from one country 
to the other; but armies could do so only with the greatest 
difficulty. To the west lay the Sahara — an immense inhos¬ 
pitable tract, peopled by small tribes roaming from oasis to 
oasis. On the north and east lay the Mediterranean and the 
Red Sea. 


EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 25 


Thus with sides and rear protected, Egypt faced Asia across Egypt 
the narrow Isthmus of Suez. And here, too, the region border- 
ing Egypt was mainly desert. But a little to the north, between 
the mountains and the sea, lay Syria, 1 a narrow strip of habitable 
ground and a nursery of warlike peoples. Here dwelt the Phoeni¬ 
cians, Philistines, Canaanites, Hebrews, Moabites, and Hittites, 
whom we read of in the Bible. Mountain ranges and rivers 
divided these peoples into 
many small, mutually hos¬ 
tile states; and so Syria 
offered a tempting field to 
Egyptian military ambition 
when Egypt had grown 
powerful enough for outside 
conquests. The Theban 
pharaohs of 2400-2000 
b. c. laid the region waste 
in a series of wars, and 
finally made themselves its 
masters. Then, about 1700 
b.c., Egypt was itself in¬ 
vaded and conquered by a 
strange race of nomads 
from the neighboring Arabian desert. From the name of their 
rulers we know these invaders as Hyksos, or Shepherds. They 
introduced the horse into Egypt. (This animal never became 
common enough for work purposes, but was used only in 
war.) 

A century later, the Hyksos were expelled by a new line The “1 
of native pharaohs at Thebes. These are known as the monarchs Empire 
of the “New Empire.” The long struggle with the invading 
Hyksos had fastened militarism disastrously upon the indus¬ 
trial Egyptians, and the New Empire is known chiefly for its 
conquests in war. 

1 The term “Syria” is used with a varying meaning. In a narrow sense, 
as in this passage, it means only the coast region. In a broader use, it 
applies to all the country between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. 



Sculptured Head of Thutmosis III 
(1470 b.c.) , who in twelve terrible cam¬ 
paigns carried Egyptian rule from the 
Isthmus to the Tigris- 







26 


ANCIENT EGYPT 


At its extreme north, the fertile Syrian strip bends south again 
in a sharp crescent around the Arabian desert down the course 
of the Euphrates and Tigris. On these rivers, so much like their 
own Nile, the Egyptian conquerors found a civilization not 
much inferior to their own, and almost as old. These first two 
homes of civilization, the valleys of the Nile and of the Euphrates, 



PH* 


iBABYLO] 


pgpr 


Ewphi 


Wk 

fmk 






M E D I £ 'CRETE 


k ARABIA 


S A dt A e 


GREATEST EXTENT 

OF THE 

EGYPTIAN EMPIRE 
About 1450 B.C. 


were only some 800 miles apart in a straight line; but along the 
two legs of the triangle — the only practicable route — the 
distance was much greater. That whole district was soon covered 
by a network of roads. These were garrisoned here and there 
by Egyptian fortresses; and along them, for centuries, there 
passed hurrying streams of officials, couriers, and merchants. 









PLATE IX 



-jft y ws. 




* 


A Modern View of the Road to the Gizeh Pyramids. 















PLATE X 




“ Colossi of Memnon” near Thebes : statues of Amenophis III (1400 b.c.) , 
whom the Romans called Memnon. In the lower view the two “ Colossi ” 
are in the background, while the structure in the foreground is part of a 
temple of Rameses III (Plate VI) with colossal statues of that pharaoh. 
The “Memnon” statues (69 feet high with the missing crowns) were 
originally the portals of a temple of which few vestiges remain. 







EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 27 


But “he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword.” 
The population of Egypt was drained of its manhood hy long 
wars, and impoverished hy heavy war taxation. Finally the pha¬ 
raohs could no longer defend their distant frontiers, and with¬ 
drew within the old borders of Egypt. In particular, they found 
it impossible to war longer with the Hittites, who, armed with 
iron weapons, descended from the slopes of the Taurus moun¬ 
tains and overthrew Egyptian power in Syria. Then, in 672, 
Egypt became subject to Assyria (p. 31). 

Twenty years later, Psammetichus restored Egyptian inde¬ 
pendence, and became the first of the final line of native pharaohs. 
He had been a military adventurer, and he won his throne 
largely through the aid of mercenary Greek troops. During 
all her earlier greatness, however much her traders visited foreign 
lands, Egypt had kept herself jealously closed against strangers. 
But Psammetichus threw open the door to foreigners, especially 
to the Greeks, who were just coming into notice. Greek 
travelers visited Egypt; large numbers of Greek soldiers served 
in the army ; and a Greek colony at Naucratis was given special 
privileges. Indeed, Sais, the new capital of Psammetichus 
and his son, thronged with Greek adventurers. Egypt “had 
lit the torch of civilization” ages before: now she passed it on 
to the Western world through this vigorous new race. 

Neco, son of Psammetichus, is remembered for his fine attempt 
to reopen the ancient canal from the Nile to the Red Sea (p. 18). 
This failed; but Neco did find another sea route from the Red 
to the Mediterranean. One of his ships sailed around Africa, 
down the east coast, returning three years later, through the 
Mediterranean. Herodotus (p. 15), who tells us the story, adds : 
“On their return the sailors reported (others may believe them 
but I will not) that in sailing from east to west around Africa 
they had the sun on their right hand.” This report, so incred¬ 
ible to Herodotus, is good proof to us that the story of the 
sailors was true. (If the student does not see why, let him 
trace the route on a globe.) 

This voyage closes Egyptian history. In 525 b.c. the land 
became subject to Persia (p. 42), and native rule has never been 


The fall of 

Egyptian 

greatness 


A brief revi¬ 
val, 650 
B.C. 


Voyage 

around 

Africa 


28 


ANCIENT EGYPT 


restored. The poet Shelley pictures the decay of Egyptian 
might: 


“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies. 

And on the pedestal, these words appear: 

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. 

Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair! ’ 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, 
The lone and level sands stretch far away. ” 


Exercises. — 1. Make and compare lists of the things we owe to 
Egypt. 2. What can you learn from these extracts upon Egypt in 
Davis’ Readings, which have not been referred to in this chapter? (If 
the class have enough of those valuable little books in their hands, this 
topic may make all or part of a day’s lesson.) 3. Do you regard the 
Great Pyramid or the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea or the con¬ 
quest of Syria as the truest proof of Egyptian greatness? 4. Can 
you see any connection between the cheap food of the Nile valley and 
its place as an early home of civilization? Could you suggest a more 
just division of the leisure that resulted from that cheap food? 


CHAPTER III 


THE MEN OF THE EUPHRATES AND TIGRIS 

Rising on opposite slopes of snow-capped Armenian moun¬ 
tains, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers approach each other in ma¬ 
jestic sweeps until they form a common valley; then they flow 
in parallel channels for most of their course, uniting just before 
they reach the Persian Gulf. 

Their valley is a rich oasis of luxuriant vegetation lying between 
the sands of Arabia and the rugged plateaus of Central Asia. 



A Babylonian Boundary Stone of about 2000 b.c., lying upon its 
left side. — Such stones were placed at each corner of a grant of land. 
The inscription records the title, and the gods are invoked to witness the 
grant or sale and to punish transgressors upon the owner’s rights. 

It has three parts. (1) Like the delta of the Nile, the lower 
part had been built up out of alluvial soil carried out, in the 
course of ages, into the sea. This district is known as Baby¬ 
lonia, or Chaldea . Its fertility, in ancient times, was kept up by 
the annual overflow of the Euphrates, regulated, like the 
Nile’s, by dikes, reservoirs, and canals. To the north, the rich 
Chaldean plain rises into a broad table-land. (2) The fertile 
half of this, on the Tigris side, is ancient Assyria. (3) The west¬ 
ern part of the upper valley (. Mesopotamia ) is more rugged, and 

29 


The land of 
the two 
rivers 


The three 
divisions 




30 


CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS 


City-states 
give way to 
an empire 



is important mainly because it makes part of the great curved 
road, around the Arabian desert, from Chaldea to Egypt (p. 26). 

By 4000 b.c. the Chaldeans had copper tools and a hiero¬ 
glyphic writing. Successive waves of conquering nomads from 

the Arabian desert finally 
made their language Semitic, 
though the people never 
really became Semites in 
blood. In the less civilized 
Tigris district, however, the 
inhabitants did become 
mainly Semitic. 1 The men of 
the South — Chaldeans, or 
Babylonians — were quick¬ 
witted, industrious, gentle. 
The men of the north — the 
hook-nosed, larger-framed, 
fiercer Assyrians — delighted 
in blood and gore, and had 
only such arts and learning 
as they could borrow from 
their neighbors. 


The Oldest Arch Known (about 4000 
b.c.). This vaulted drain was dis¬ 
covered a few years ago fifteen feet 
below what had long been supposed 
to be the earliest remains of Baby¬ 
lonian civilization. It seems to have 
been part of a highly complex drain¬ 
age system in a crypt of an ancient 
temple. The arch is two feet high. 

The clay pipes, whose forms can be 
seen dimly on the bottom, are eight 
inches in diameter, and lie in two-foot 

joints. date. Each such city, with 

its surrounding hamlets and farms, was a little “city-state.” 
First Accad and then Ur (both of which we read of in the Bible) 
won control over all Chaldea. Later, Babylon in Chaldea and 
Nineveh in Assyria became the capitals of mighty empires. 2 


Just as in early Egypt, so 
in this double valley, many 
cities waged long wars with 
one another from an earlv 


1 The languages of the Arabs, Jews, Assyrians, and of some other neigh¬ 
boring peoples, such as the ancient Phoenicians (p. 46), are closely related. 
The whole group of such languages is called Semitic, and the peoples who 
speak them are called Semites (descendants of Sherri). 

2 An empire is properly a state containing many sub-states. Egypt was 
called a kingdom while it was confined to the Nile valley, but an empire when 
its sway extended over Ethiopia and Syria (p. 25). 




ASSYRIAN “FRIGHTFULNESS” IN WAR 


31 


About 2150 b.c., a new Semitic conqueror, Hammurapi, 
established himself at Babylon, and soon extended his rule 
over the whole valley and westward even to the Mediterranean. 
This was the First Babylonian Empire. For hundreds of years 
Chaldean fashions were copied, Chaldean manufactures were 
used, and Chaldean “books” were read, all over Syria; and, 
ever since, the name Babylon has remained a symbol for mag¬ 
nificence and power. After five or six centuries, however, Egyp + 
for a time seized most of this Babylonian empire (p. 26). 

In 745 b.c., Nineveh, long subject to Babylon, became her¬ 
self the seat of an Assyrian Empire, larger and mightier than 
any that had gone before it. The king Sargon carried away the 
Ten Tribes of Israel into captivity (722 b.c.) ; Sargon’s son, 
Sennacherib, subdued Judah; 1 and Sennacherib’s son con¬ 
quered Egypt (p. 27). 

Every Assyrian energy went to make the army a perfect 
fighting machine. The soldiers were armed with iron weapons 
(adopted from the Hittites (p. 27)), and were equipped with 
battering rams and great hurling engines, to beat down the earth 
walls of unsubmissive cities. The transportation and disper¬ 
sion of a conquered nation, with unimaginable sufferings (as 
in the case of the “Lost Tribes” of Israel), was a common 
practice, to guard against rebellion. “Frightfulness” was the 
deliberate policy of the Assyrians, to intimidate their enemies; 
and the rulers exulted fiendishly in details of cruelty. Said 
parts of two royal inscriptions : 

“ They did not embrace my feet. . . . I captured the city. . . . The 
spoil I carried away. ... I cut off the hands and feet of some [of the 
conquered]; I cut off the noses, ears, and fingers of others. ... I 
built a pyramid, of the living and a pyramid of heads. The city I over- 

1 2 Kings, xviii. For the Assyrian story, see Davis’ Readings, I, No. 12. 
Sennacherib, however, is best remembered from the Jewish account of the 
destruction of his army, in an earlier expedition, -by a sudden plague — 
“smitten by the angef of the Lord.” This is the incident referred to in 
Byron’s lines: 

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 

And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold . . . 

Like leaves of the forest when Autumn has blown, 

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.” 


Hammurapi 
and the 
Babylonian 
Empire 


The 

Assyrian 
Empire and 
“ fright¬ 
fulness ” 


32 


CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS 


Fall of 
Assyria 



Obelisk of Shalmaneser II of 
Assyria (858 b.c.). —'From 
Jastrow’s Babylonia and As¬ 
syria. This is a huge black 
stone, four-faced. The five 
bands of sculpture upon two 


The wide rule of Assyria was 
short-lived. Her strength was wasted 
by constant wars abroad, and her 
industries decayed at home. A burn¬ 
ing hatred, too, against her cruelties 
and her crushing taxation rankled in 
the hearts of the oppressed peoples. 
x4fter twenty years of subjection, 
Egypt broke away. Twenty years 
more, and Babylon followed. Hordes 
of “Scythians ” (probably Tartar 
nomads) from the north devastated 
the empire. And in 606 the Medes 
and Babylonians captured Nineveh 
itself; and the proud “ city of 
blood/' which had razed so many 
other cities, was given to sack and 
pillage. The passionate exultation 
of all neighboring peoples was spoken 
in the stern words of the Hebrew 


threw, dug up, and burned. The nobles, 
as many as had revolted, 1 flayed. With 
their skins I covered the pyramid [of 
citizens]. . . . Some of them I buried 
aliverin the midst of the pyramid; others 
I impaled on stakes. 

In another inscription Sennacherib 
declares that he once razed Babylon 
itself for rebellion: “Temple and tower 
I tore down. . . . I dug ditches through 
the city, and laid waste its site. Greater 
than the deluge was its annihilation.” 


faces in this cut run around 
the four faces, as do the in¬ 
scriptions. Each band illus¬ 
trates the conquest by Shal¬ 
maneser of a different nation, 
and the inscriptions contain 
the cruel passages recorded 
on this page. One inscription 
records the tribute exacted 
from Jehu, king of Judah. 


prophet: “ All that hear the news of 
thy fate shall clap their hands over 
thee — for whom hath not thy 
wickedness afflicted continually?'’ 1 
Two hundred years later the Greek 

1 Nahum iii, 1-19. See also Isaiah xiii, 
16-22, and Jeremiah 1 and li. 





THE FALL OF NINEVEH 


33 


adventurer Xenophon, standing on the crumbling ruins of 
Nineveh, could not even learn their name. 

A Second Babylonian Empire began with the successful Second 
rebellion against Assyria, in 625 b.c., but it lasted less than ®^^ nian 
a century. The glory of this period belongs chiefly to the reign 
of Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 b.c.). He carried away the Jews 
into the “Babylonian Captivity”—in unhappy imitation of 



Assyrian policy; but he also rebuilt Babylon on a magnificent 
scale, and renewed the ancient engineering works (Davis’ 
Readings ). Soon after this reign, Babylon fell before the rising 
power of Persia (p. 42). 

During the past thousand years, under Turkish rule, the 
last vestiges of the ancient engineering works of Chaldea have 
gone to ruin. The myriads of canals are choked with sand, 
and, in this early home of civilization, the uncontrolled over- 






34 


CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS 


flow of the river turns the eastern districts into a dreary marsh, 
while on the west the desert has drifted in, to cover the most 
fertile soil in the world, — and the sites of scores of mighty 
cities are only shapeless mounds, where sometimes nomad 
Arabs camp for a night. Recently (since 1910), it is true 



Babylonian Lion. Straight north and south through Babylon ran a 
famous “ Procession Street,” or “ Sacred Way,” from the temple of 
Marduk, the city’s guardian god, to the city gate. In Nebuchadnez¬ 
zar’s time this street was paved with huge smooth slabs of stone. On 
either side of this pavement ran a high brick wall, ornamented along its 
entire length with a frieze of lions in low relief, brilliantly enameled in 
white and yellow upon a dark blue ground and crowned with white rosettes. 
This procession of lions (symbol of the god) led to colossal sculptures 
of guardian bulls at the city gateway. 


(under German control, and now under English), many thou¬ 
sand acres have been reclaimed for fields of cotton and grain. 

The king The king, both in Chaldea and Assyria, was surrounded with 
everything that could awe and charm the masses. Extraordi¬ 
nary magnificence and splendor removed him from the common 
people. He gave audience, seated on a golden throne covered 
with a purple canopy which was supported by pillars glittering 
with precious stones. All who came into his presence prostrated 





SOCIETY AND, LIFE 


35 



themselves in the dust until bidden to rise. His rule was 
absolute. 

The peasants tilled the rich land in misery. As in Egypt 
they paid for their holdings with half of the produce. In a 
poor year, this left them in 
debt for seed and living. The 
creditor could charge exorbi¬ 
tant interest — usually 20 per 
cent a year; and if it were not 
paid, he could levy not only 
upon the debtor’s small goods, 
but also upon wife or child, or 
upon the farmer himself, for 
slavery—though only for three 
years. 

The wealthy class included 
land-owners, officials, profes¬ 
sional men, money lenders, 
and merchants. The merchant 
in particular was a prominent 
figure. The position of Chal¬ 
dea, at the head of the Persian 
Gulf, made its cities the nat¬ 
ural mart of exchange between 
India and Syria. The exten¬ 
sive wars of Assyria, cruel as 
they were, were not merely for 
love of conquest: they were 
largely commercial in purpose, 

—to win “ a place in the sun,” 
like most modern wars, — to 
secure the trade of Syria and 
Phoenicia, and to ruin trade centers, like Damascus, Jerusalem, 
and Tyre, that were competing with Nineveh. 

In 1902 a.d., a French explorer found a collection of 280 
Babylonian laws inscribed, in some 2600 lines, upon an eight- 
foot shaft of stone. This “code” asserts that it was enacted 


Laws of Hammurapi (see text). —• 
At the top of the stone shaft, on 
one face, is a sculptured relief rep¬ 
resenting the king (standing) receiv¬ 
ing the Law from the hand of the 
Sun God. 


Rich and 
poor 


Commerce 
and wars of 
greed 


Laws of 
Hammurapi 




36 


ASSYRIA-AND BABYLONIA 


Cuneiform 

writing 


And writing 
schools 


Books 

and 

libraries 


by Hammurapi (p. 31). It is the oldest known code of laws 
in the world; and it shows that the men for whom it was made 
were already far advanced in civilization. It tries to guard 
against bribery of judges and witnesses, against careless medical 
practice, against ignorant or dishonest building contractors, as 
well as against the oppression of widows and orphans. Some 
provisions remind us of the later Jewish law of an eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth — though injuries to a poor man 
could be atoned for in money: 

“ If a man has caused a man of rank to lose an eye, one of his own 
eyes must be struck out. If he has shattered the limb of a man of rank, 
let his own limb be broken. [But] If he has caused a poor man to lose 
an eye, or has shattered a limb, let him pay one maneh of silver ” [about 
$32 in our values]. 

This code, and other discoveries, show that rights of property 
were carefully guarded. Deeds, wills, marriage settlements, 
legal contracts of all kinds, survive by tens of thousands. 

The early inhabitants of Chaldea had a system of hieroglyph¬ 
ics not unlike the Egyptian. At first they wrote, or painted, 
these on the papyrus, which grew in the Euphrates as well as in 
the Nile. Later, they came to press the characters with a sharp 
metal instrument into clay tablets (which were then baked 
to preserve them). This change of material led to a change 
in the written characters. The pictures shriveled and flat¬ 
tened into wedge-shaped symbols, and so scholars call this 
writing cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus , wedge. The sig¬ 
natures to legal documents show a great variety of hand¬ 
writings ; and recently a Babylonian schoolhouse has 
been excavated, where boys were taught to write. The floor 
was strewn with many “slates” (soft clay tablets when the 
Babylonian boys used them), covered with writing exercises, 
evidently from set copies of various degrees of difficulty. When j 
such a “slate” was full, the Babylonian boy cleaned it by scrap¬ 
ing it smooth with a straight-edged scraper. 

Each of the numerous cities that studded the valley of the j 
twin rivers had its library, sometimes several of them. A 
library was a collection of clay tablets or bricks covered with 


PLATE XI 




Above. — Fragment of a Babylonian “ Deluge Tablet” — with a story 
of a deluge somewhat like that in Genesis. 

Below. — A Babylonian Contract Tablet in Duplicate. —The outer 
tablet is broken to show part of the inner original, which could always be 
consulted if the outside was thought to have been tampered with. 























PLATE XII 



An Assyrian “Book” — an eight-sided cylinder of baked clay inscribed 
with the story of eight campaigns of Sennacherib. The brick (now in 
the British Museum) is about three times as large as its representation 
here. 









LEARNING AND LIBRARIES 


37 


minute cuneiform writing — six lines, perhaps, to an inch. 
In Babylon the ruins of one library contained over thirty thou¬ 
sand tablets, of about the date 2700 b.c., all neatly arranged 
! in order. A tablet, with its condensed writing, corresponds 
fairly well to a chapter in one of our books. Each tablet had 
its library number stamped upon it, and the collections were 
carefully catalogued. The kings prided themselves on keeping 
libraries open to the public; and a large part of the inhabitants 
(including many women) could read and write. 

The literary class studied the “dead” language of the pre- 
Semitic period, as we study Latin, and the merchants were 
obliged to know the languages spoken in Syria in that day. 
The libraries contained dictionaries and grammars of these lan¬ 
guages, and also many translations of foreign books, in columns 
parallel with the originals. Scribes were constantly employed in 
copying and editing ancient texts, and they seem to have been 
very careful in their work. When they could not make out a 
word in an ancient copy, they tell us so, and leave the space 
blank. 

Science was somewhat hindered by belief in charms and magic. 
Some of our boyish forms of “counting out” such as “eeny, 
meeny, miny, moe,” are playful survivals of solemn forms of 
divination used by Chaldean magicians. Still, in geometry 
the Chaldeans made as much progress as the Egyptians; and 
in arithmetic more. Their notation combined the decimal 
and duodecimal systems. Sixty was a favorite unit (used as 
we use the hundred) because it is divisible by both ten and 
twelve. (That notation survives on the faces of most of 
! our clocks and on every school globe, and the Chaldean “ dozen” 
is still one of our units.) 

As in Egypt, too, the clear skies and level plains invited an 
early study of the heavenly bodies. Every great city had its 
lofty observatory and its royal astronomer; and in Babylon, 
in 331 b.c., Alexander the Great found the record of an unbroken 
i series of observations running back 1900 years before that time. 
Toward the close of their civilization the Chaldeans learned 
to foretell eclipses. In great measure, however, they studied 


Chaldean 

science 


Astrology 





38 


ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 


Arts and 
industry 


Our debt 
Babylon 


astronomy as a means of foretelling the future — because the 
stars were thought to influence human lives. This pretended 
science we call astrology, to distinguish it from real astronomy. 
It was practiced in earnest in Europe as late as Queen Eliza¬ 
beth’s time, and, even after so many hundred years, a European 
astrologer was always called “a Chaldean.” 

These men of the Euphrates made practical use of their 
science. They invented wheeled carts, and, very early, they . 

devised effective defen¬ 



sive armor — helmets of 
leather embossed with 


copper plates. They 


Babylonian Cylinder Seals. Every well- 
to-do person had his seal, with which to sign 
letters and legal papers. Sometimes they 
were finely engraved jasper or chaledony. 


based on the length of finger, hand, 
measures, along with their weights, have 


wrote books on agri¬ 
culture, which passed on 
their skill in that field 
to the Greeks. They 
understood the lever and 
pulley, and used the 
arch in vaulted drains 
and aqueducts. They 
invented an excellent 
system of measures, 
and arm; and these 
come' down to us 


through the Greeks. Our pound is merely the Babylonian 


mina renamed. The symbols in our “Apothecaries’ Table,” still 


used in every physician’s prescription, are Babylonian, as are 
the curious “signs of the zodiac” in our almanacs. As we get 
from the Egyptians our year and months, so from the Chaldeans 
we get the week, with its “seventh day of rest for the soul.” 

Babylonian metal-workers and engravers had surpassing 
skill in cutting gems, enameling, and inlaying. Assyrian 
looms, too, produced the finest of muslins and of fleecy 
woolens, to which the dyer gave the most brilliant colors. The 
rich wore long robes of those cloths, decorated with em¬ 
broideries. Tapestries and carpets, also, wonderfully colored, 
were woven, for walls and floors and beds. 










L.l. POATES ENG.CO., N.Y. 

























































' 


V 


' 







































> 








♦ 









- 












I 




> , 


































ART AND RELIGION 


39 



The Euphrates valley had no stone and little wood. Brick¬ 
making, therefore, was, next to agriculture, the most important 
industry. Ordinary houses were built of cheap sun-dried 
bricks. The same material was used for all but the outer 
courses of the walls of the palaces and temples; but for these 
outside faces, a kiln-baked brick was used, much like our own. 
With only these imperfect materials, the Babylonians con¬ 
structed marvelous tower-temples and elevated gardens, in imi¬ 
tation of mountain scenery. The “Hanging Gardens,” built 


Impressions from a King’s Cylinder Seal. The figure in the air repre¬ 
sents the god who protects the king in his perils. 


Architec¬ 
ture and 
sculpture 


by Nebuchadnezzar to please his wife (from the Median moun¬ 
tains), rose, one terrace upon another, to a height of one hun¬ 
dred and fifty feet, and were counted by the Greeks among the 
“seven wonders of the world.” But this extensive use of sun 
dried brick explains the complete decay of Chaldean cities, — 
which, in the course of ages, sank into shapeless mounds hardly 
distinguishable from the surrounding plain. 

Assyria abounded in excellent stone. Still for centuries her 
builders slavishly used brick, like the people from whom they 
borrowed their art. Finally, however, they came to make use 
of the better material about them for sculpture and for the 
facings of their public buildings. In architecture and sculp¬ 
ture, though in no other art, Assyria, land of stone, excelled 
















Religion 


40 ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 

Babylonia, land of brick. In the royal palaces, especially, the 
almost unlimited power of the monarchs and their Oriental 
passion for splendor and color produced a sumptuous mag¬ 
nificence. 

Babylonians and Assyrians worshiped ancestors. Mingled 
with this religion was a nature worship, with numerous gods 
and demigods. Ancestor worship is usually accompanied by a 
belief in witchcraft and in unfriendly ghosts and demons. In 
Chaldea these superstitions appeared in exaggerated form. The 
pictures in early Christian times representing the devil with 
horns, hoofs, and tail, came from the Babylonians, through the 
Jewish Talmud (a Hebrew book of learning and legends). 

Nature worship, in its lower stages, is often accompanied by 
debasing rites, in which drunkenness and sensuality appear as 
acts of worship. The stern reproaches of the Hebrew prophets 
have made Babylon notorious for such features in her religion; 
but the following hymn composed in Ur, before the time of 
Abraham, shows noble religious feeling. 

‘‘Father, long suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds the 
life of all mankind! . . . 

First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none 
who may fathom it! . . . 

In heaven, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! 

On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! 

As for thee, thy will is made known in heaven, and the angels bow their 
faces. 

As for thee, thy will is made known upon earth, and the spirits below 
kiss the ground.” 






CHAPTER IV 


THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 

Now the map grows. Shortly before the overthrow of Babylon, 
two new centers of power had appeared, one on either side of the 
Syrian crescent. These were Persia and Lydia. Lydia was a 
kingdom in western Asia Minor. Somewhat before 550 b.c. 
its sovereign, Croesus, united all Asia Minor west of the Halys 
River under his sway (including many Greek cities on the 
eastern Mediterranean coast). This made the Lydian Empire 
for a time one of the great world-powers (map opposite). 

The region abounded in gold and silver; and “ rich as Croe¬ 
sus” became a byword. Lydia’s gift to the world was the 
invention of coinage. As early as 650 b.c., a Lydian king 
stamped upon pieces of silver a statement of their weight and 
purity, with his name and picture as guarantee of the state¬ 
ment. This “money” of Lydia could be received anywhere at 
once at a fixed rate — which made commerce vastly easier. 
Ever since, the coinage of money has been one of the important 
duties of governments. The older “barter,” however, remained 
the common method of exchange, except in the most progressive 
markets, for centuries more. 

On the farther side of the Euphrates and Tigris lay the lofty 
and somewhat arid Plateau of Iran. This was the home of the 
Medes and Persians. These peoples appeared first about 850 
b.c., as fierce barbarians, whom Assyria found it needful to 
subdue repeatedly. Gradually they adopted the civilization 
of their neighbors; and, in 606, as we have seen, the Medes 
conquered Assyria. 

Then the civilized world was divided, for three generations, 1 

1 A generation, as a measure of time, means the average interval that 
separates a father from his son. This corresponds in length, also, in a 
rough way, to the active years of adult life, — the period between early 
manhood and old age. It is reckoned at twenty-five or thirty years. 

41 


Lydia and 
its gift 


A new field 
for history 



42 


THE PERSIANS 


A rest from 
war 


Cyrus 
makes the 
Persian 
Empire 


Extent and 
population 


between four great powers, — Babylon, Egypt, Lydia, and 
Media. These kingdoms were friendly allies, and the civilized 
world had a rare rest from internal war. 

But in 558 b.c., Cyrus, a tributary prince of the Persian 
tribes, threw off the yoke of the Medes and set up an inde¬ 
pendent Persian monarchy — which quickly became the most 
'powerful empire the world had known. Cyrus conquered 
Media and her allies, Lydia and Babylon; and a few years 
later his son subdued Egypt. The new empire included 
all the former ones, together with the new districts of 
Iran and Asia Minor. 

The next three Persian kings (after Cyrus and his son) 
added to their dominions modern Afghanistan and northwestern 
India on the east, with vast regions to the northeast beyond the 
Caspian Sea; and on the west, the European coast from 
the Black Sea to the Greek peninsula and the islands of the 
Aegean. This huge realm contained possibly seventy-five 
million people, and its eastern and western frontiers were farther 
apart than Vancouver and New York. Its only civilized 
neighbors were India 1 and Greece. Elsewhere, indeed, it was 
bounded by seas and deserts. 


Persia and 
the 

Scythians 


Persian art and literature were wholly borrowed, mainly from 
Babylonia. Besides the expansion of the map, already noted, 
Persia’s services to the world were three: the repulse of Scythian 
savages; a better organization of government; and the lofty char¬ 
acter of her religion. 

1. About 630 b.c., shortly before the downfall of Nineveh, 
the steppes of the North had poured hordes of savages into 
western Asia (p. 32). By the Greeks these nomads were called 
Scythians, and their inroads were like those of the Huns, Turks, 
and Tartars, in later history. They plundered as far as Egypt; 
and they were a real danger to all the culture the world had 
been building up so painfully for four thousand years. The 

j 

1 Civilizations grew up at a very early date in the great river valleys of 
India and China; but these civilizations have not much affected our “West¬ 
ern” civilization until very recently. Therefore they are not taken into ac¬ 
count in this volume. 











































DARIUS THE ORGANIZER 


43 



I 

1 


early Persian kings, by repeated expeditions into the Scythian 
country, saved civilization from these ruthless ravagers. 

2. The first “empires” were held together very loosely. The 
tributary kingdoms had to pay tribute and to assist in war, 
and from time to time their kings were expected to attend the 
court of their master. Otherwise, the subject states were sepa¬ 
rate uifits. They kept their old kings and their own language, 
laws, and customs. Two of them sometimes made war upon 
each other, without interference from the head king. A foreign 
invasion or the unexpected 
death of a sovereign might 
shatter the loose union; 
and then would follow 
years of bloody war, until 
some king built up the 
empire once more. Peace 
and security could not 
exist. 

The Assyrian rulers had 
begun to reform this plan 
of government. They left 
the subject peoples their 
own laws and customs, as 
before; but they broke up 
some of the old kingdoms 
into satrapies , or provinces, ruled by appointed officers. (This 
was Assyria’s sole contribution to progress.) The system, how¬ 
ever, was still unsatisfactory. In theory the satraps were wholly 
dependent upon the will of the imperial king; but in practice 
they were very nearly kings themselves, and they were under 
constant temptation to try to become independent rulers, by 
rebellion. 

The Persians adopted and extended the system of satraps; 
and Darius “the Organizer ,” the fourth Persian king (521-485 
b.c.), introduced three new checks upon rebellion. (1) In each 
of the twenty provinces, power was divided between the satrap 
himself and the commander of the standing army. (2) In 


Persian Gold Armlet, 5 inches in height. 
Found on the banks of the Oxus in 1877. 


A new im¬ 
perial organ¬ 
ization 








44 


THE PERSIANS 


Post 

roads 


The Persian 
religion 


Zoroaster 


each province was placed a royal secretary (the “King’s Ear”) 
to communicate constantly with the Great King. And (3), 
most important of all, a special royal commission (the “King’s 
Eye”), backed with military forces, appeared at intervals in 
each satrapy to inquire into the government, and, if necessary, 
to arrest the satrap. 

This was the most satisfactory organization ever invented by 
an Oriental empire, ancient or modern. To the vast Persian 
world it brought a long period of freedom from the waste and 
horror of internal war. 

Each of the subject provinces kept its own language and 
customs; but Darius did something also to create a spirit of 
union in the Empire. He reopened the ancient Egyptian canal 
from the Nile to the Red Sea, 1 to encourage trade; 2 and, to 
draw the distant parts of the Empire together, he built a mag¬ 
nificent system of post roads, with milestones and excellent inns, 
with ferries and bridges, and with relays of swift horses for the 
royal couriers. The chief road, from Susa to Sardis (map 
after p. 42), fifteen hundred miles long, “pierced the strata 
of many tribes and diverse cultures, and helped set the world 
a-mixing. ” 

3. While they were still barbarous tribes, the Persians had 
learned to worship the forces of nature, — especially sun, 
moon, stars, and fire. This worship was in the hands of priests, 
called Magi, who were believed to possess “magic” powers 
over nature and other men. But the Persians of the historic 
age had risen to a nobler worship. This is set forth in the Zend- 
Avesta (the Persian Bible), and it had been established about 
1000 b.c. by Zoroaster. According to this great teacher, the 
world is a stage for unceasing conflict .between the powers of 
Light and Darkness, or Good and Evil. It is man’s duty to 
assist the good power by resisting evil impulses in his own heart 
and by fighting injustice among men. It is also his place to 

1 A series of monuments set up by Darius to commemorate this great 
engineering work have recently been dug out of the sands which, after a few 
generations, had been allowed again to bury the canal. 

2 It was then that trade with the Far East first brought our domestic 
“chicken” into Western Asia. 











PLATE XIII 



Reliefs from Assyrian Palaces 























PLATE XIV 







I I I PP 

mm J 


^■■■ ■» 




'- m 

:.Sj fesas 








Frieze of Lions from the Palace of Artaxerxes Memnon at Susa, fifth century b.c. Now in the 
Louvre. Note the imitation of Babylonian art, p. 34. The capital of the column (seen through open¬ 
ing) shows more originality. 





























RELIGION AND MORALS 


45 


kill harmful beasts, to care tenderly for other animals, and 
to make the earth fruitful. The following passage from the 
Zend-Avesta shows the Persian idea of a future life: 

At the head of the Chinvat Bridge, betwixt this world and the next, 
when the soul goes over it, there comes a fair, white-armed and beauti¬ 
ful figure, like a maid in her fifteenth year, as fair as the fairest things 
in the-world. And the soul of the true believer speaks to her, “What 
maid art thou, — all surpassing in thy beauty? ” And she makes an¬ 
swer, “O youth of good thought, good words, good deeds, and of good 
religion: — I am thine own conscience.” Then pass the souls of the 
righteous to the golden seat of Ahura-Mazda, of the Archangels, to 
. . . “ The Abode of Song.” 

Another passage tells how the souls of the wicked are met by a foul 
hag and are plunged into a hideous pit, to suffer endless torment. 

The cardinal virtue was truthfulness. Darius’ instructions to 
his successor began : “ Keep thyself utterly from lies. The man 
who is a liar, him destroy utterly. If thou do thus, my country 
will remain whole.” A century later, the Greek Herodotus 
admired the manly sports of the Persians and the simple train¬ 
ing of their boys, — “ to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to 
speak the truth.” 

Exercise. — Would you have expected the Persians to adopt the 
Egyptian hieroglyphs or the cuneiform writing? Why? In what 
ways was the organization of the Persian Empire an improvement 
upon that of the Assyrian? In what way did Assyrian organization 
improve upon Egyptian? 

For Further Reading. — There is an admirable twenty-page treat¬ 
ment of the Persian Empire in Benjamin Ide Wheeler’s Alexander the 
Great (pp. 187-207), —• a book which for other reasbns deserves a place 
in every school library. Davis’ Readings, I, Nos. 25-31, contain much 
interesting material upon Persian religion and morals. 




CHAPTER V 


Sailors and 
traders 




THE MIDDLE STATES 

From the Persian Empire the story of civilization passes 
back to Europe; but first we must stop to note briefly the 
work of two small peoples of Syria, the middle land between the 
Nile and the Euphrates. Without ever growing into powerful 
empires, the Phoenicians and the Hebrews were mighty factors 
in the progress of the world. 

I. THE PHOENICIANS 

The Phoenicians dwelt on a little strip of broken coast shut 
off from the interior by the Lebanon Mountains (map, p. 50). 
Their many harbors invited them seaward, and the “cedar of 
Lebanon” offered the best of ship timber. When history first 
reveals the Mediterranean, it is dotted with their adventurous 
sails. At first, half traders, half pirates, their crews crept from 
island to island, to barter with the natives or to sweep them off 
for slaves, as chance might best suggest. Then, more daringly, 
they sought wealth farther and farther on the sea, until they 
passed even the Pillars of Hercules, 1 into the open Atlantic. 
By 1100 b.c. they had become the traders of the world; and we see 
them exchanging the precious tin of Britain, the yellow amber 
of the Baltic, and the slaves and ivory of West Africa, 
for the spices, gold, scented wood, and precious stones 
of India. The ship that Neco sent to circumnavigate Africa 
was manned by Phoenician sailors; and the chief Phoenician 
cities, Tyre and Sidon* were among the most splendid and 
wealthy in the world. (Read Ezekiel, xxvi-xxvii, for a mag¬ 
nificent description of the grandeur of Tyre and of the wide 
extent of her commerce.) 

1 Two lofty hills, one on each side of the Strait of Gibraltar, beyond which 
the Ancients generally thought lay inconceivable perils (map after p. 70). 

46 






THE PHOENICIANS 


47 


The Phoenicians were the first colonizers. They fringed 
the larger islands and the shores of the Mediterranean with 
trading stations, which became new centers of civilization. 
Carthage, Utica, Gades (Cadiz, on the Atlantic), were among 
their colonies (map after p. 70). They worked tin mines in Col¬ 
chis, in Spain, and finally in Britain, and so made possible the 
manufacture of bronze on a larger scale than before, to replace 
stone implements. Probably they first introduced bronze into 
many parts of Europe. 

To get things wherewith to trade, the Phoenicians became 
manufacturers, —■ learning from Egyptians and Babylonians to 
work in metals, glass, and textiles. Hammer, loom, potter’s 
wheel, engraver’s knife, were always busy in Tyre, and quan¬ 
tities of their products are found in ancient tombs of Greece 
and Italy — the earliest European homes of civilization. The 
Phoenicians were “missionaries” of culture. It was their func¬ 
tion not to create civilization, but to spread it. 

Their chief export, it is well said, was the alphabet. When 
the Egyptians first conquered Syria, about 1600 b.c., the Phoeni¬ 
cians were using the cuneiform script of Babylon (introduced 
among them by Hammurapi’s conquest). But their commerce 
made it necessary to keep complicated accounts and to com¬ 
municate with agents in distant ports. This called for a sim¬ 
pler way of writing; and, about 1100 b.c., we find them with 
a true alphabet of twenty-two letters— for consonant sounds 
only — probably derived from Egyptian “sound-symbols.” 

The Phoenician cities submitted easily, as a rule, to any 
powerful neighbor. From Babylonia, from Egypt, from Persia, 
in turn, they bought security by paying tribute in money and 
in ships. Assyria sought to annihilate the Phoenician cities, 
as rivals in trade, and did destroy many of them; but Tyre 
was saved by her position on a rocky island-promontory. 
Finally, in 332 b.c., it was captured by Alexander the Great 
(p. 136). From this downfall the proud city never fully re¬ 
covered, and fishermen now spread their nets to dry in the sun 
on the bare rock where once her tall towers rose. 


The first 
colonizers 
in history 


Industries 


Mission¬ 
aries of 
civilization 


The 

alphabet 


Fall of Tyre 







48 


THE HEBREWS 


Wandering 

shepherds 


The captiv¬ 
ity in Egypt 


II. THE HEBREWS 

As the Phoenicians were men of the sea, so the early Hebrews 
were men of the desert. They appear first as wandering shep¬ 
herds along the grazing lands on the edge of the Arabian sands. 
Abraham , the founder of the race, emigrated from ‘‘Ur of the 
Chaldees,” about 2100 b.c. He and his descendants, Isaac 


I 

The Fertile Land of Goshen To-day. — Palms and grain. From 
Petrie’s Egypt and Israel. 

I] 

and Jacob, lived and ruled as patriarchal chiefs, much as Arab 
sheiks do in the same regions to-day. 

Finally, “ the famine was sore in the land.” Jacob and his 
sons, with their tribesmen and flocks, sought refuge in Egypt. 
Here they found Joseph, one of their brethren, already high 









AND THEIR MISSION 


49 


in royal favor. The rulers of Egypt at this time, too, were the 
Hyksos, themselves originally Arabian shepherds; and the 
Hebrews were allowed to settle in the fertile pasturage of Go¬ 
shen, near the Red Sea, where flitting Arab tribes have always 
been wont to encamp. But soon the native Egyptian rule was 
restored by Theban pharaohs, “who knew not Joseph/’ These 
powerful princes of the New Empire (p. 25)* reduced the He¬ 
brews to slavery, and employed them on great public works, 
and “ made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and 
in brick and in all manner of service in the field.” 

Three centuries later, while the Egyptian government was in 
a period of weakness and disorder, the oppressed people escaped 
to the Arabian desert again, led by the hero Moses. For a 
man’s lifetime, the fugitives wandered to and fro, after their 
ancient manner; but they were now a numerous people and 
had become accustomed to fixed abodes. About 1250 b.c., 
under Joshua, to whom Moses had turned over the leadership, 
they began to conquer the fertile valleys of Palestine for their 
home. Then followed two centuries of bloody warfare with 
their neighbors, some of whom had long before taken on the 
civilization of Babylonia. 

During this period the Hebrews remained a loose alliance 
of twelve shepherd tribes, led by a series of popular heroes, 
like Samson, Jephthah, Gideon, and Samuel, known as Judges. 
Much of the time there was great and ruinous" disorder, and 
bands of robbers drove travelers from the highways. Finally, 
the Philistines for a time overran the land at will. 

Thus the Hebrews felt the necessity for stronger government. 
Saul, a mighty warrior, roused them against the Philistine 
spoilers, and led them to victory. In return they made him 
their first king. Alongside this monarch and his successors, 
however, there stood religious teachers without office but with 
great authority. These “prophets” were shepherd preachers, 
clad perhaps only in the sheepskin of the desert; but they did 
not hesitate to rebuke or oppose a sovereign. 

David, the second king (about 1070-977), completely subdued 
the Philistines, and, taking shrewd advantage of the fact that 


The Exodus 


And the 
conquest of 
Palestine 


Under the 
Judges 


Kings and 
prophets 



50 


THE HEBREWS 


The king¬ 
dom of 
David 


Solomon 
and the 
Temple 
(977- 
937 B.C.) 


the great states on the Nile and the Euphrates were both in a 
period of decay, he raised the Hebrew state into a small empire 
in western Syria. He will be remembered longest, how¬ 
ever, as “the sweet singer of Israel.” He was originally a 
shepherd boy who attracted Saul’s favor by his beauty and 

his skill upon the 
harp; and, in the 
most troublous days 
of his kingship, he 
sought rest and com¬ 
fort in composing 
songs and poems, 
which are now in¬ 
cluded in the sacred 
Book of Psalms. 

David’s son, Solo¬ 
mon, built a noble 
temple at Jerusalem 
for the worship of 
Jehovah. Until this 
time the only sacred 
shrine of the He¬ 
brews had been a 
portable “Ark,” 
suited to a primitive : 
and nomad tribe; ] > 

and even now they , 
lacked architectural 
skill to construct 
large buildings. But 
Solomon’s ally, King 
Hiram of Tyre, sent 
skilled Phoenician 
builders for the work, 
and it was completed with great magnificence. Solomon also 
built rich palaces with his foreign workmen, and copied within 
them the splendor and luxury of an Oriental court. 
















AND THEIR MISSION 


51 


The Hebrews now began to grow prosperous—with the usual 
inequality of great wealth and extreme poverty. And soon the 
prophets, like Micah and Amos (the first social reformers in 
history), were denouncing fiercely the fraud and violence of the 
greedy rich, who “ corrupt judgment ” (in law cases) and “ grind 
the faces of the poor.” The punishment for the nation, which 
they .foretold, was already on the way. 

Solomon’s reign closed the brief age of political greatness for the 
Hebrews. The twelve tribes had not come to feel themselves 
really one nation. They had been divided into two groups 
in earlier times : ten tribes in one group ; two in the other. The 
“ten tribes” now held the north, the more fertile part of Pales¬ 
tine, with numerous cities. The “two tribes,” in the rugged 
south, were still largely shepherds and herdsmen. David 
had belonged to the smaller group, and his early kingship had 
extended over only the two tribes. Jealousies against the rule 
of his house had smoldered all along among the ten tribes. 
Now came a final separation. Solomon’s taxes had sorely 
burdened the people. On his death, the ten tribes petitioned 
his son for relief, and when the young king ( Rehoboam ) replied 
with haughty insult, they set up for themselves as the Kingdom 
of Israel, with a capital at Samaria. The tribes of Benjamin 
and Judah remained faithful to the house of David, and became 
the Kingdom of Judah, with the old capital, Jerusalem. 

The Kingdom of Israel lasted 250 years, until Sargon carried 
the ten tribes into that Assyrian captivity in which they are 
“lost” to history (p. 31). Judah lasted four centuries after the 
separation, most of the time tributary to Assyria or to Babylon. 
Finally, in punishment for rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar carried 
away the people into the Babylonian captivity (p. 33). 

When the Persians conquered Babylon, they showed special 
favor to the Jews, and the more zealous of the race returned 
to Judea. From this time, such control of their own affairs 
as was left to them by Persia was in the hands of the 
priests, led by the High Priest of the Temple. At this time 
the sacred writings of the Hebrews — our “ Old Testament ” — 
were recopied and arranged in their present form. (In the 


Division and 
decline 


The 

captivities 


Priestly 

rule 





52 


THE HEBREWS 


eighth century the Hebrews had borrowed an alphabet from the 
Phoenicians.) 


The faith in 
one God 


Growth of 
the faith 


The Hebrews added nothing to material civilization, nor 
did they contribute directly to any art. Their work was 
higher. Their religious literature was the noblest the world had 
seen, and it has passed into all the literatures of the civilized 
world; but even this is valuable not so much for its literary 
merit as for its moral teachings. The true history of the Hebrews is 
the record of their spiritual growth. Their religion was infinitely 
purer and truer than any other of the ancient world. 

At first this lofty faith belonged to only a few — to the pa¬ 
triarchs, and later to the prophets, with a small following of 
the more spiritually minded of the nation. For a thousand 
years the common people, and some of the kings, were con¬ 
stantly falling away into the superstitions of their Syrian neigh¬ 
bors. But it is the supreme merit of the Hebrews that a rem¬ 
nant always clung to the higher religion, until it became the 
universal faith of that “chosen” and sifted people who, after 
the Babylonian captivity, found their way back to Judea through 
so many hardships. 


Suggestions for Review 

Let the class prepare review Questions, each member five or ten, to 
ask of the others. Criticize the questions, showing which ones help 
to bring out important facts and contrasts and likenesses, and which 
are merely trivial or curious. It is well to make lists of important 
names or terms for rapid drill, demanding brief but clear explanation 
of each term, i.e. cuneiform, shekel, Hyksos, papyrus. 

Sample Questions: (1) In what did the Egyptians excel the Babylo¬ 
nians ? (2) In what did the Babylonians excel the Egyptians ? (3) In 

what did the Persians excel both? (4) Trace the growth of the map 
for civilized countries. (5) Locate four centers of civilization for 
1500 b.c., and observe, on the map, where they would most naturally 
come in contact with one another. (6) What new center became promi¬ 
nent between 1700 and 1000 b.c.? (One more center for that age — 
Crete — is yet to be treated.) 

Caution: Make sure that the terms “empire/' “state,” “tributary 
state,” “civilization,” have a definite meaning for the student. 





































































































































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PART II-THE GREEKS 


Greece — that 'point of light in history! — Hegel. 

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our art have 
their Ydots in Greece. — Shelley. 


CHAPTER VI 


AEGEAN CIVILIZATION, 3500-1200 B.C. 


At least as early as 3500 b.c. slim, short, dark-skinned men 
in the New-Stone stage, were living in round-hut villages on the 
shores and islands of the eastern Mediterranean. Especially 
about the Aegean Sea with its clustering 
islands, these men were making a graceful 
pottery charmingly decorated, and had de¬ 
veloped considerable trade. About 3000 B.c. 
these Aegeans learned the use of bronze 
from Egypt, and, having once begun, they 
soon drew many other gifts and hints from 
the Oriental states, to which they were so 
near. 

In the early period, leadership in the 
Aegean fell naturally to Crete. Old Greek 
legends represent that island as a leading 
source of Greek civilization and as the home 
of powerful kings long before the Greek 
tribes on the mainland rose out of barbar- y ASB FROM knossos 
ism; and recent excavations prove that 
these legends are based on truth. Crete 
stretches its long body across the mouth of the Aegean, and 
forms a natural stepping-stone from Egypt to Europe. By 
2500 B.c. it had advanced far into the Bronze Age, and for 

53 



(2200 B.c.) , with 
sea-life ornament. 


Aegean 
culture, 
3500 B.C, 


Cretan 

leadership 




54 


THE EARLY GREEKS 


Remains at 
Knossos of 
2200 B.C. 


The palace 
of Minos 


the next thousand years its civilization rivaled that of Egypt 
itself. Hand-made pottery gave way to admirable work on 
the potter’s wheel; and the vase-paintings, of birds and beasts 
and plant and sea life, are more lifelike than anything in 
Egyptian art. The walls of the houses were decorated with a 
delicate “eggshell” porcelain, in artistic designs. At Knossos, 

a palace, built about 2200 
b.c., has been unearthed, 
spreading over more than 
four acres of ground, with 
splendid halls, corridors, 
living rooms, throne rooms, 
and treasure rooms, and 
with many frescoes depict¬ 
ing the brilliant life of the 
lords and ladies of the 
court. Especially amaz¬ 
ing are the bathrooms, 
with a drainage system 
“superior to anything in 
Europe until the nine¬ 
teenth century.” The 
pipes could be flushed; 

Mouth of Palace Sewer at Knossos, and a man-trap permitted 

with terracotta drain pipes. • , • j 

v * inspection and repair. 

Back of the Queen’s apartments stood a smaller room with a 

baby’s bath. (Recent excavations show such systems in still 

older Egyptian temples.) 

This palace is usually called the palace of “King Minos.” 
Minos was famed by the later Greeks as a great Cretan lawgiver. 
We may think of him ruling widely over the surrounding seas 
from his throne at Knossos, while Hammurapi was issuing his 
code of laws at Babylon, or while some one of the beneficent 
pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom was constructing the Egyp¬ 
tian irrigation works, or about the time when Abraham set out 
from Ur of the Chaldees. 

In the treasure rooms of the palace at Knossos, there were 








PLATE XV 





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PLATE XVI 



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£ 









CRETAN CIVILIZATION 


55 




Cooking Utensils of 2200 b.c., found in one tomb at Knossos. 


found numbers of small clay tablets covered with writing — appar- A Cretan 
ently memoranda of the receipt of taxes. These, and other such al P habet 
remains since discovered, show 
that the Cretans had developed 
a system of syllabic writing, 
based on Egyptian sound sym¬ 
bols, ,but more advanced. Un¬ 
happily scholars have not yet 
learned to read it. A Roman 
historian who * wrote a little 
before the birth of Christ men¬ 
tions that in his day the Cre¬ 
tans claimed that their ances¬ 
tors had invented the alphabet, 
and that the Phoenicians had 
only made it better known. 

Modern Cretans had forgotten 
this claim ; but these recent dis¬ 
coveries give it much support. 

Each home wove its own cloth, as we learn from the loom- Tools and 


Cretan Writing of 2200 b.c. — 
Plainly some of these characters 
are numerals. Others resemble 
later Greek letters. 


weights in every house. Each home, too, had its stone mortars 


. utensils 














56 


THE EARLY GREEKS 


Mycenae 
“ rich in 
gold ” 


for grinding the daily supply of meal. Kitchen utensils were 
varied and numerous, and strangely modern in shape. Most 
cooking was done over an open fire of sticks — though sometimes 
there was a sort of recess in a hearth, over which a kettle stood. 
When the destroying foe came upon Knossos, one carpenter 
left his kit of tools hidden under a stone slab, which preserved 
them; and among them we find saws, hammers, adz, chisels 
heavy and light, awls, nails, files, and axes. They are of bronze. 



The Gate of the Lions at Mycenae. —• The huge stone at the top of 
the gate, supporting the lions, is 15 feet long and 7 feet thick. Enemies 
could reach the gate only by passing between long stone walls — from 
behind which archers could shoot down upon them. 


of course, but in shape they are so like our own that it seems 
probable that this handicraft passed down its skill without a 
break from the earliest European civilization to the present. 
One huge crosscut saw, like our lumberman’s, was found in 
a mountain town. 

Crete did not stand by itself in its culture. The Greeks of 
the historical period had many legends about the glories of 
an older Mycenae “rich in gold.” And there, in Argolis, some 
fifty years ago an explorer uncovered remains of an ancient 





PROGRESS BEFORE HOMER 


57 


city of perhaps 1200 b.c., with peculiar, massive (“ Cyclopean”) 
walls. Within were found a curious group of tombs where 
lay in state the embalmed bodies of ancient kings,-- 

“ in the splendor of their crowns and breastplates of embossed plate of 
gold; their swords studded with golden imagery; their faces covered 
strangely in golden masks. The very floor of one tomb was thick with 
gold dust — the heavy gilding from some perished kingly vestment. 
In another was a downfall of golden leaves and flowers. And amid 
this profusion of fine fragments were rings, bracelets, . . . dainty 
butterflies for ornaments, and a wonderful golden flower on a silver 
stalk.” 


For Further Reading. — Specially suggested: Davis’ Readings , 
I, No. 32, gives an interesting extract from an account of Cretan re¬ 
mains by one of the discoverers. Additional, for students who wish 
wider reading: Hawes, Crete the Fore-runner of Greece; or Baikie, Sea 
Kings of Crete. 



Bronze Dagger from Mycenae, inlaid with gold.—This dagger was 
prominent in the “ Greek Exhibit ” sent to America by the Greek govern¬ 
ment just after the World War and shown in various of our cities- 









CHAPTER VII 


Barbarian 
Achaeans 
from the 
north 


Troy and 
the Homeric 
poems 


THE GREEKS OF HOMER 

About 1500 b.c. bands of tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, semi- 
barbarous Achaeans from the north, drawn by the splendor and 
riches of the south, broke into the Aegean lands, as northern 
barbarians many times since have broken into southern Europe. 
Some fortunate chance had given these mighty-limbed strangers 
a knowledge of iron; and now, armed with long iron swords, 
and bringing their flocks and herds, with their women and 
children in rude carts drawn by horses, they established them¬ 
selves among the short, dark, bronze-weaponed natives, became 
their masters, dwelt in their cities, married their women, and 
possessed the land. 

This occupation was a slow process, working unrecorded 
misery on generation after generation of the gentler natives. 
For the most part, the newcomers filtered in, band by band, 
seizing a valley or an island at a time. Occasionally, however, 
large armies warred long and desperately about some strong¬ 
hold of the old civilization. Knossos had never had walls: 
it had trusted for defense to its position on an island and to 
its sea-power; and it fell early before fleets of Achaean sea- 
rovers. In walled cities like Mycenae, the old culture lived 
on three or four centuries more. The legends of the Trojan 
War were probably based on one of the closing struggles. 

Our knowledge of the Achaeans comes largely from the so- 
called “Homeric poems,” the Iliad and the Odyssey. The 
later Greeks believed that these were composed about 1000 b.c. 
by a blind minstrel named Homer. Scholars now think that 
each collection was made up of many ballads sung originally 
by different bards at different times and handed down orally 
from father to son for centuries before they were put into writ¬ 
ing. The Iliad describes part of a ten-year siege of Troy by 

58 






HOMER’S “ACHAEANS 


59 


Achaean chieftains from all parts of Greece. The Odyssey 
tells the adventures and wanderings of Odysseus (Ulysses), 
one of the heroes, in the return from that war. Whether or 
not there was a Trojan War, the poems certainly tell us much 
about the customs and ideas of the Greeks of 1100 b.c. ; and 
their pictures of Greek life have been confirmed by recent exca¬ 
vation of remains in the soil. 

The first explorer in this field of excavation in Greek lands Schlie- 
was Dr. Henry Schliemann. When Schliemann was a child in a s 
German village, his father told him the Homeric stories, and 
once showed him a fanciful picture of the huge “ Walls of Troy. ” 

The child was told that no one now knew just where Troy had 
stood, and that the city had left no traces ; but he insisted that 
such walls must have left remains that could be uncovered 
by digging; and his father playfully agreed that sometime 
Henry should find them. Later, the boy heard that the learned 
scholars of his day did not believe that “Troy” had ever existed. 

This aroused in him a fierce resentment; and to carry out his 
childhood dream of finding the great walls of Homer’s city be¬ 
came the passion of his life. 

In 1870, after many years spent in winning the necessary Excavations 
wealth and learning, Dr. Schliemann began excavations at a at Troy 
little village in “ Troy-land, ” on a mound of earth three miles 
inland from the shore. The explorations continued more than 
twenty years and disclosed the remains of nine distinct 
towns, one above another. The oldest, on native rock, some 
fifty feet below the present surface, was a rude village of the 
Stone Age. The second, thought by Schliemann to be Homer’s 
Troy, showed powerful walls, a citadel that had been de¬ 
stroyed by fire, and a civilization marked by bronze weapons 
and gold ornaments. We know now that this city belonged 
to the early Cretan age, and that it passed away more than 
a thousand years before Homer’s time. Above it came the 
remains of three inferior settlements, and then — the sixth 
layer from the bottom — a much larger and finer city, which 
had perished in conflagration some 1100 or 1200 years before 
Christ. Explorations, after Schliemann’s death, proved this 




60 


EARLY GREEKS 


sixth city to be the Troy described so fully in the Iliad. (Above 
this Homeric Troy came an old Greek city, a magnificent city 
of the time of Alexander the Great, a Roman city, and, finally, 
the squalid Turkish village of to-day. The position of these 
towns commanded the trade between the Black Sea regions 
and the Aegean. This accounts, probably, for the succession 



A Small Part of the Excavations at Troy. 


Achaeans 

and 

Aegeans 
blend into 
“ Greeks.” 


of cities there, and perhaps for the destruction of some of them 
in war by trade-rivals.) 

The tall, fair, yellow-haired Achaeans of the Homeric poems 
left no trace among the Greeks of history a few centuries later. 
Their blood was absorbed into that of the more numerous and 
better-acclimated Aegeans among whom they settled, and 
the Greeks of later history were short and dark. But first the 
Achaeans had imposed their language on the conquered people, 1 


1 Some Aegean words survived in the later Greek. Thus the Greek 
word for bath-tub comes from the older language. What fact in civilization 
is suggested by this fact in language ? 






HOMER’S “ACHAEANS 


61 


as conquerors usually do. The change in language, and the 
ignorance of the invading barbarians, explains the loss of the 
Aegean art of writing — which probably had been known only 
to a small class of scribes. Most of the art and refinement 
of the old civilization also perished. But much of the customs 
and beliefs of the common people survived, to mingle with 
those of the conquerors. 

When Achaeans and Aegeans had blended into “Greeks” 
(1100 or 1000 b.c.), they were made up of many tribes. Each 
tribe was composed of people living in one neighborhood and 
believing in a common ancestor. A tribe was made up of 
clans (gentes ). A clan was a group of real kindred, a sort of 
enlarged family. The nearest descendant of the forefather of 
the clan, counting from oldest son to oldest son, was the clan- 
elder, — a kind of “ priest-king” ; and the clan-elder of the lead¬ 
ing clan in the tribe was the tribal “priest-king.” 

The tribe usually settled in separate clan villages in the valleys 
about some convenient hill. On the hilltop was the meeting 
place of the whole tribe for worship ; and a ring wall, at a con¬ 
venient part of the slope, easily turned this sacred place into a 
citadel. In hilly Greece many of these citadels grew up near to¬ 
gether; and so, very early, groups of tribes combined further. 
This made a city. The chief of the leading tribe then became the 
priest-king of the city. The later Athenians had a tradition 
that in very early times the hero Theseus founded their city 
by bringing together four tribes living in Attica. 

If the cities could have combined into larger units, Greece might 
have become a “nation-state, ” like modern England or France. 
But the Greeks, in the time of their glory, never got 
beyond a city-state. To them the same word meant “ city” 
and “ state. ” To each Greek, his city was his country. The 
political 1 relations of one city with another five miles 
away were foreign relations, as much as its dealings with 
the king of Persia. Wars, therefore, were constant. 

1 “Political” means “relating to government.” 


Tribe and 
clan 


Tribal cita¬ 
dels grow 
into cities 



62 


HOMER’S GREEKS 


Govern¬ 
ment of the 
early city- 
state 


The 

Assembly 


Each city, like each of the old tribes, had a king, a council 
of chiefs, and a popular assembly. 

The king was leader in war, judge in peace, and priest at all 
times; but his power was much limited by custom. 

The council of chiefs were originally the clan elders and the 
members of the royal family. Socially they were the king’s 
equals ; and in government he could not do anything in defiance 
of their wish. 


The common freemen came together for worship and for 
games; and sometimes the king called them together, to listen 
to plans that had been adopted by him and the chiefs. There 
the freemen shouted approval or muttered disapproval. They 
could not start new movements. There were no regular meet¬ 
ings and few spokesmen; and the general reverence for the 
chiefs made it a daring deed for a common man to brave them. 

However, even in war, when the authority of the nobles was 
greatest, the Assembly had to be persuaded: it could not be 
ordered } Homer shows that sometimes a common man ven¬ 
tured to oppose the “kings.” In an Assembly of the army 
before Troy, the discouraged Greeks break away to launch 
their ships and return home. Odysseus hurries among them, 
and by persuasion and threats forces them back to the Assembly, 
until only Thersites bawls on, — “ Thersites, uncontrolled of 
speech, whose mind was full of words wherewith to strive against 
the chiefs. Hateful was he to Achilles above all, and. to Odys¬ 
seus, for them he was wont to revile. But now with shrill shout 
he poured forth his upbraidings even upon goodly Agamemnon ” 
[the chief commander of the Greeks]. Odysseus, it is true, 
rebukes Thersites sternly and smites him into silence, while 
the crowd laughs. “Homer” sang to please the chieftains, 

1 King, Council of Chiefs, and popular Assembly were the germs of later 
monarchic , oligarchic , and democratic government. A monarchy, in the first 
meaning of the word, is a state ruled by one man, a “monarch.” An oli¬ 
garchy is a state ruled by a “few,” or by a small class. A democracy is a 
state where the whole people govern. In ancient history the words are used 
with these meanings. Sometimes “aristocracy” is used with much the same 
force as “ oligarchy.”. (In modern times the word “monarchy ” is used some¬ 
times of a government like England, which is monarchic only in form, but 
which really is a democracy.) 






SOCIETY AND LIFE 


63 


his patrons, — and so he represents Thersites as a cripple, ugly 
and unpopular; but there must have been popular opposition 
to the chiefs, now and then, or the minstrel would not have 
mentioned such an incident at all. 

Society was simple. When the son of Odysseus, in the poem, A simple 
visits a city where some of the old Mycenean greatness survives, society 
he is astounded by the splendor of the palace, with its “ gleam as 
of sun and moon,” lighted as it was by torches held by massive 
golden statues, — the walls blazing with bronze and with glit¬ 
tering friezes of blue glass. Mighty Odysseus had built his 
palace with his own hands, and it has been well called — from 
the poet’s description — “a rude farmhouse, where swine wallow 
in the court. ” The one petty island, too, in which Odysseus 
was head-king, held scores of yet poorer “kings.” So, too, 
when Odysseus is shipwrecked on an island, he finds the 
daughter of the chief king — the princess Nausicaa — doing a 
washing, with her band of maidens, treading out the dirt by 
trampling the clothes with their bare feet in the water of a 
running brook, much as the peasants of southern Europe do 
to-day. 

Manners were harsh. In the Trojan War, when the Trojan Rude and 
hero, Hector, fell, the Greek kings gathered about the dead harsh 
body, “and no one came who did not add his wound.” The 
commonest boast was to have given a foe’s body to be half 
devoured by the packs of savage dogs that hung about the 
camp for such morsels. The chiefs were borne to the combat 
in chariots. They were clad in bronze armor, and fought with 
bow and spear. A battle was little more than a series of single 
combats between these warriors. The common freemen followed 
on foot, without armor or effective weapons, and counted for 
little except to kill the wounded and strip the slain. 

The mass of the people were small farmers, though their Life and 
houses were grouped in villages. Even the kings tilled their w0 
farms, in part at least, with their own hands. Odysseus boasts 
that he can drive the oxen at the plow and “cut a clean fur¬ 
row” ; and when the long days begin he can mow all day with 
the crooked scythe, “ pushing clear until late eventide. ” There 



64 


HOMER’S GREEKS 


Religion of 
the clan 


And of the 
home 


Rad appeared a class of miserable landless freemen (perhaps 
descended from dispossessed Aegean farmers) who hired them¬ 
selves to farmers. When the ghost of Achilles (the invincible 
Greek chieftain) wishes to name to Odysseus the most unhappy 
lot among mortals, he selects that of the hired servant (p. 66). 
Slaves were few, except about the great chiefs. There they 
served as household servants and as farm hands; and they seem 
to have been treated kindly. When Odysseus returned from his 
twenty years of war and wandering, he made himself known 
hrst to a faithful swineherd and to one other slave — and 
“they threw their arms round wise Odysseus and passionately 
hissed his face and neck. So likewise did Odysseus kiss their 
heads and hands.” 

Artisans and smiths were found among the retainers of the 
great chiefs. They were highly honored, but their skill was 
far inferior to that of the Aegean age. Some shields and inlaid 
weapons of that earlier period had passed intb the hands of 
the Achaeans; and these were always spoken of as the work 
of Hephaestus, the god of fire and of metal work. 

A separate class of traders had not arisen. The chiefs, in 
the intervals of farm labor, turned to trading voyages now and 
then, and did not hesitate to increase their profits by 'piracy. 
It was no offense to ask a stranger whether he came as a pirate 
or for peaceful trade {Odyssey, hi, 60-70). 

The clan religion was a worship of clan ancestors. If pro¬ 
vided with pleasing meals at proper times and invoked with 
magic formulas (so the belief ran), the mighty ghosts of ancient 
clan elders would continue to aid their children. The clan tomb 
was the altar. Milk and wine were poured into a hollow in 
the ground, while the clan elder, the only lawful priest, spoke 
sacred formulas inviting the dead to eat. 

In like manner, the families of the clan each came to have its 
separat e family worship of ancestors. The hearth was the family 
altar. Near it were grouped the Penates, or images of household 
gods who watched over the family. The father was the priest. 
Before each meal, he poured out on the hearth the libation, 
or food-offering, to the family gods and asked their blessing. 





RELIGION 


65 


Originally, no doubt, the family tomb was under the hearth. 
(Cf. the Cave Men, p. 3.) This explains why the hearth became 
an altar, and why food offerings to ancestors continued to be 
made there all through Greek and Roman history. 

But the religion of which we hear most in Greek literature 
grew out of a nature worship. The lively fancy of the Greeks 
personified the forces of nature in the forms and characters 
of men and women — built in 
a somewhat more majestic 
mold than human men. The 
great gods lived on cloud- 
capped Mount Olympus, and 
passed their days in feasting 
and laughter and other pleas¬ 
ures. When the chief god, 

Zeus, slept, things sometimes 
went awry, for other gods 
plotted against his plans. His 
wife Hera was exceedingly 
jealous — for which she had 
much reason — and the two 
had many a family wrangle. 

Some of the gods went down 
to aid their favorites in war, and were wounded by human 
weapons. The twelve great Olympian deities were (Latin 
names in parentheses): 

Zeus (Jupiter), the supreme god; god of the sky; “father of gods, 
and men.” 

Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea. 

Apollo, the sun god; god of wisdom, poetry, prophecy, and medicine. 

Ares (Mars), god of war. 

Hephaestus (Vulcan), god of fire — the lame smith. 

Hermes (Mercury), god of the wind; messenger; god of cunning, of 
thieves, and of merchants. 

Hera (Juno), sister and wife of Zeus; queen of the sky. 

Athene (Minerva), goddess of wisdom; female counterpart of Apollo. 

Artemis (Diana), goddess of the moon, of maidens, and of hunting. 

Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of love and beauty. 



Zeus 


The 

Olympian 

religion 







66 


HOMER’S GREEKS 


Ideas of a 
future life 


Demeter (Ceres), the earth goddess — controlling fertility. 

Hestia (Vesta), the deity of the home; goddess of the hearth fire. 

All the world about was peopled, in Greek imagination, by a 
multitude of lesser local gods and demigods — spirits of spring 
and wood and river and hill — all of whom, too, were personi¬ 
fied as glorious youths or maidens. To give the gods beautiful 
human forms, rather than the revolting bodies of lower animals 
and reptiles, was an advance, even though it fell far short of 
the noble religious ideas of the Hebrews and Persians. 

As to the future life the Greeks believed in a place of terrible 
punishment ( Tartarus ) for a few great offenders against the 
gods, and in an Elysium of supreme pleasure for a very few others 
particularly favored by the gods. But for the mass of men the 
future life was to be “ a washed-out copy of the brilliant life on 
earth” —its pleasures and pains both shadowy. Thus Odys¬ 
seus tells how he met Achilles in the home of the dead: 

“And he knew me straightway, when he had drunk the dark blood [of 
a sacrifice to the dead]; yea, and he wept aloud, and shed big tears as 
he stretched forth his hands in his longing to reach me. But it might 
not be, for he had now no steadfast strength nor power at all in moving, 
such as was aforetime in his supple limbs. . . . But lo, other spirits 
of the dead that be departed stood sorrowing, and asked concerning 
those that were dear to them.” And in their talk, Achilles exclaims 
sorrowfully: “Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death, O great 
Odysseus. Rather would I live on ground as the hireling of another , even 
with a lack-land man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among 
all the dead.” 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested: Davis’ Readings, I, 
Nos. 33-39. Additional: Bury, pp. 69-79. The legends of heroes 
and demigods, like Hercules, Theseus, and Jason, are retold charmingly 
for young people by Hawthorne, Gayley, Guerber, and Kingsley. 






CHAPTER VIII 


FROM THE TROJAN TO THE PERSIAN WAR 

1000-500 B.C. 

I. THE DORIANS AND NEW GREEK MIGRATIONS 

About 1000 b.c. Greek civilization was checked again, for a 
hundred years, by invasions from the north. The new bar¬ 
barians called themselves Dorians. They were probably merely 
a rear-guard of the Achaean invasion, delayed somewhere in 
the north for two or three centuries. But in this interval 
they had come to fight as heavy-armed infantry in close ranks, 
with long spears projecting from the array of shields. The 
Achaeans, who fought still in loose Homeric fashion, could not 
stand against this disciplined onset. 

The Dorians settled mainly in the Peloponnesus; and that 
district (the old center of both Aegean and Achaean glory) 
lost its leadership in all but war. When civilization took a 
new start among the Greeks, soon after 900 b.c., it was from 
new centers, especially in Attica and in Asia Minor. 

The peninsula of Attica, guarded on the land side by rugged 
mountains, was the one part of southern Greece not overrun 
| by the Dorians. The Greeks there had come to call themselves 
1 lonians. Many fugitives from the Peloponnesus sought 
refuge in Attica. But Attica could not support all the new¬ 
comers ; and, after a brief stay, many passed on across the 
Aegean, to the coast of Asia Minor. There they established 
themselves in twelve great cities, of which the most important 
were Miletus and Ephesus (map after 52). All the middle 
district of that coast took the name Ionia, and looked upon 
Ionian Athens as a mother-city. Other Greek tribes soon colo¬ 
nized the rest of the eastern Aegean coast. 

While the Greeks were so dispersing in space, they were 

67 


The Dorian 
conquest 


And other 
migrations 


lonians in 
Attica 


Coloniza¬ 
tion of the 
coast of Asia 
Minor 







68 


THE GREEKS, 1000-500 B.C. 


Oneness of 
feeling 
among all 
Hellenes 


Due to 
language 


And to 
Religion 


The Olym¬ 
pic games 


beginning to grow together in feeling. They remained in 
wholly separate “states”; but they had come to believe in a 
kinship with one another, to take pride in their common civili¬ 
zation, and to set themselves apart from the rest of the world. 
The chief forces which had created this oneness of feeling 
were (1) language and literature, and (2) the Olympian religion. 

1. The Greeks understood one another’s dialects, while the 
men of other speech about them they called “Barbarians,” 
or babblers ( Bar'-bar-oi ). This likeness of language made it 
possible for all Greeks to possess the same literature. The poems 
of “ Homer” were sung and recited in every village for centuries. 

2. The religious features that helped especially to bind 
Greeks together were the Olympic Games and the Delphic 
Oracle. 

To some great festivals of the gods, men flocked from all 
Hellas. This was especially true of the Olympic games. These 
were celebrated each fourth year at Olympia, in Elis, in honor 
of Zeus. The contests consisted of foot races, chariot races, 
wrestling, and boxing. The victors were felt to have won the 
highest honor open to any Greek. They received merely an 
olive wreath at Olympia; but at their homes their victories 
were commemorated by inscriptions and statues. Only Greeks 
could take part in the contests, and wars between Greek states 
were commonly suspended during the month of the festival. 

To these games came merchants, to secure the best market 
for rare wares. Heralds proclaimed treaties there — as the 
best way to make them known through all Hellas. As civiliza¬ 
tion grew, poets, orators, and artists gathered there; and 
gradually the intellectual contests and exhibitions became the 
most important feature of the meeting. The oration or poem 
or statue which was praised by the crowds at Olympia had 
received the approval of the most select and intelligent judges 
that could be brought together anywhere in the world. 

The four-year periods between the games were called Olym¬ 
piads. These periods finally became the Greek units in count¬ 
ing time: all events were dated from what was believed to be 
the first recorded Olympiad, beginning in 776 b.c. 





PLATE XVII 




Above. — Ruins of Entrance to the Stadium at Olympia, passing 
from the Temple of Zeus. 

Below- — Ruins of the Stadium at Delphi. — The festival there in 
honor of Apollo was second only to the Olympic Games. 


















































































■ 

. 

■ 
























> 











' 






I 


































* 










v 
























ART AND SCIENCE 


69 


Apollo, the sun god, was also the god of prophec’y. His 
chief temple was at Delphi, far up the slopes of Parnassus, 
amid wild and rugged scenery. From a fissure in the ground, 
within the temple, volcanic gases poured forth. A priestess 
would inhale the gas until she seemed to pass into a trance, 
and, while in this state, she was supposed to see into the future 
by the aid of the god. The advice of this “oracle” was sought 
by men and by governments throughout all Hellas. 


II. INDUSTRY, ART, AND SCIENCE 

After the overthrow of the Cretan sea-kings and the ruin of 
the Cretan civilization, about 1500 b.c., Phoenicia for a thou¬ 
sand years was almost the only sea-power of the Mediterranean, 
i Along the Greek coasts and islands her traders bartered with 
! the inhabitants (much as European traders did three centuries 
I ago with American Indians), tempting them to high payments 
for strange wares — lions and other beasts carved in little 
ivory ornaments, purple robes, blue-glass bottles, or perhaps 
merely colored glass trinkets — and counting it best gain of all 
if they could lure curious maidens aboard their black ships 
for distant slave markets. In return, they made many an 
unintended payment. Language shows that they gave the 
Greeks the names, and so no doubt the use, of linen, cinnamon, 

| soap, lyres, cosmetics, and tablets. The forgotten art of writ¬ 
ing, too, they introduced again. 

But the lively Greeks were not slavish imitators. They added 
vowel letters to the Phoenician signs, and so first completed the 
alphabet. Soon they began to manufacture the Phoenician 
trade articles for themselves, and finally they became successful 
rivals in trade. 

About 800 b.c. the Greeks entered on a new colonizing move¬ 


ment, which continued two hundred years (800-600 b.c.), and 
doubled the area of Greek settlement. The cause, this time, 
was not war. The new colonies were founded largely for trad¬ 
ing stations, — to capture trade from the Phoenicians, — and 
at the same time to provide the crowded and discon- 


The Delphic 
Oracle 


Phoenician 

influence 


f 


Greek col¬ 
onies after 
8oo B.C. 








70 


THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 


Growth of 
manufac¬ 
tures 



tented farming class with new land. Miletus sent colony 
after colony to the north shore of the Black Sea , to control 
the corn grain trade there. Sixty Greek towns fringed that sea 
and its straits. The one city of Chalcis, in Euboea, planted 
thirty-two colonies on the Thracian coast, to secure the gold 
and silver mines of that region. On the west, Sicily became 

almost wholly Greek, and 
southern Italy took the 
proud name of Magna 
Graecia (Great Greece). 
Among the more im¬ 
portant of the colonies 
were Syracuse in Sicily, 
Tarentum, Sybaris, and 
Croton in Italy, Corcyra 
near the mouth of the 
Adriatic, Massilia (Mar¬ 
seilles) in Gaul, Olynthus in 
Thrace, Cyrene in Africa, 
Byzantium at the Black 
Sea’s mouth, and Nau- 
cratis in Egypt (p. 27). 
The colonists ceased to 
be citizens in their old 
homes. Each new city 
enjoyed complete inde¬ 
pendence. It kept a strong friendship for its “metropolis” 
(mother city); but there was no political union between them. 

While trade was sowing cities along the distant Mediterranean 
shores, it also brought an industrial revival in old Greece. 
The ships that sailed forth from Athens or Corinth or Miletus 
carried metal work, vases, and textiles, and brought home, 
from the Black Sea regions, amber, fish, grain, and sometimes 
products of the distant East that had reached the Black Sea 
by caravan. To keep up a supply for the export trade, the 
Greek artisans had to produce more and more, and more and 
more improve their products — as with Phoenicia earlier. 


Attic Vase, Sixth Century b.c-, now in 
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The fig¬ 
ures picture scenes from a battle of gods 
with giants- 





























• * 






























J 


























* 






I 


















f 




























































































































































































ART AND SCIENCE 


71 


In Athens one large section of the city was given wholly to great 
factories in which beautiful pottery was made (see “ Ceramicus” 
in the plan of Athens, p. 101); and vases of this period, signed 
by artists in these factories, are unearthed to-day all the way 
from central Asia Minor to northern Italy. 

Oriental vase-painting had delighted in forms half-human, 
half-beast, as Oriental sculpture did. But Greeks now dropped 
all unnatural features from their art — first of all peoples — and 
found increasing satisfaction in depicting the beauty of the 
human body, with or without draperies. The artist first 
colored the vase black, and then painted his designs in red on 



Ground Plan of the Temple of Theseus at Athens (p. 79). 


that background. He began, too, to see how to draw figures 
in perspective, and a growing interest in everyday life is shown 
by an increasing proportion of scenes from the work and play 
of common men. (See cuts, pp. 97, 115, 124, etc.) 

About 600, architecture made marked advance, and began 
to show a character distinct from that of Egyptian archi¬ 
tecture — on which it was founded. Its chief use was in build¬ 
ing temples for the gods, rather than in palaces as in the Cretan 
age. In every Greek city, through the rest of Greek his¬ 
tory, the temples were the most beautiful and most noticeable 
structures. 

The plan of the Greek temple was very simple. People did 
not gather within the building for service, as in our churches. 


Vase- 
paintings 
and what 
they teach 


Architecture 





































































72 


THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 


Poetry 


nor did troops of priests live there, as in Oriental temples. 
The inclosed part of the building, therefore, was small and 
rather dark. — containing only one or two rooms, for the 
statues of the god and the altar and the safe-keeping of the 
offerings. It was merely the god’s house, where people could 
bring him offerings when they wished to ask favors. 

The temple was rectangular. The roof projected beyond 
the inclosed part of the building, and was supported not by 

walls, but by a row of 
columns running around 
the four sides. The ga¬ 
bles {pediments ) in front 
and rear were low, and 
were filled with relief 
statuary, as was also the 
frieze, between the cor¬ 
nice and the columns. 
Sometimes there was a 
second frieze upon the 
walls of the building in¬ 
side the colonnade. The 
building took much of its 
beauty from its colon¬ 
nades. The hint was 
taken from Egypt; but 
the Greeks far surpassed 
all previous builders in 
the use of the column 



1, shaft; 2, capital; 3, frieze; 4, cornice; 5, part of 
roof, showing low slope. 


and in shaping the column itself. The chief differences in the 
styles of architecture were marked by the columns and their capitals. 
According to differences in these features, a building is said to 
belong to the Doric or Ionic “order.” Later there was 
developed a Corinthian order. (See cuts herewith, and on pp. 
75, 79, 218, and Plates XXII, XXVII.) 

In poetry there was more progress even than in architecture. 
The earliest Greek poetry had been made up of ballads, cele¬ 
brating wars and heroes. These ballads were stories in verse, 






























































ART AND SCIENCE 


73 


sung by wandering minstrels. The greatest of such composi¬ 
tions rose to epic poetry, of which the Iliad and Odyssey are the 
noblest examples. Their period is called the Epic Age. 

In the seventh and sixth centuries, most poetry consisted of 
odes and songs in a great variety of meters. Love and pleasure 
are the favorite themes, and the poems describe the feelings 
of the writer rather than the deeds of some one else. These 
poems were intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the 
lyre (a sort of harp). They are therefore called lyrics; and the 
seventh and sixth centuries are known as the Lyric Age. 

Pindar, the greatest of many great lyric poets, came from 
Boeotia. He delighted especially to celebrate the rushing 
chariots and glorious athletes of the Olympic games. Sappho, 
of Lesbos, wrote exquisite love songs, of which a few fragments 
survive. The ancients were wont to call her “ the poetess, ” 
just as they referred to Homer as “ the poet/’ 

Two other poets of this age represent another kind of poetry. 

One was Thespis, at Athens, who wrote the first plays. The 
other, Hesiod of Boeotia (about 800 b.c.), wove together into 
a long poem old stories of the creation and of the birth and 
relationship of the gods (the Theogony), and wrote also remark¬ 
able home-like poems on farm life (Works and Days ) which 
made a sort of textbook on agriculture (Davis’ Readings ). 

Hesiod was himself a hard-toiling farmer, and his pictures of 
the dreary life of a Greek peasant help us to understand the 
colonizing movement of his time. 

In Ionia, in the sixth century b.c., men first began fearlessly Philosophy 
to try to explain the origin of the universe. Thales, of Miletus, 
taught that all things came from water: that is, from the 
condensation of an original all-pervading moisture. One of 
his disciples affirmed that the world had evolved from a fiery 
ether. Another taught that the higher animal forms had 
developed from lower forms. These explanations were merely 
daring guesses; but the great thing is that men should have 
begun to think about natural causes at all, in place of the old, 
supposed supernatural causes, for all that happens. Thales 





74 


THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 


The kings go 


Class 

struggles 


argued that the movements of sun and stars were determined, 
not by the whims of gods who dwelt in them, as people thought, 
but by fixed natural law; and he proved his argument by pre¬ 
dicting an eclipse of the sun — which came off as he had fore¬ 
told. (He had visited Egypt; and some writers guess that he 
had had access to the astronomical observations of the Baby¬ 
lonians. He foretold about the time of the eclipse, not the exact 
hour or minute.) 

In Magna Graecia, Pythagoras sought the explanation of the 
universe, not in any kind of matter, but in Number, or Har¬ 
mony. This, he said, was the principle that had brought 
order out of prmeval chaos. His disciples, naturally, paid 
much attention to mathematics; and to Pythagoras himself 
is ascribed the famous demonstration in geometry that the 
square on the longest side of the right-triangle is equal to the 
sum of the squares on the two other sides. The Pythagoreans, 
too, especially connected “philosophy” (the name for their 
study of the beginnings of things) with human conduct. The 
harmony in the outer world, they urged, should be matched 
by harmony in the soul of man. 

III. THE “ PEOPLE ” RULE AT ATHENS 

Between 1000 and 500 b.c., the “kings” disappeared from all 
Greek cities except Sparta and Argos — and there they kept, 
little but their dignity. Everywhere the nobles had been 
growing in wealth, through their control of all commerce. 
As the only capitalists, they loaned money to the ordinary 
farmers — on exorbitant interest, as high as twenty per cent a 
year — and took farm after farm on mortgage foreclosure, 
perhaps enslaving also the farmers and their families. Not 
content with so oppressing the masses below them, they used 
their increased power to divide among themselves, step by step, 
the old royal authority. The Homeric monarchies became oli¬ 
garchies (p. 62, note). 

The next step was the rise of tyrants. In all Greek cities 
there had come to be a sharp division between classes. The 
wealthy nobles called themselves “the few” or “the good”: 






THE PEOPLE RULE AT ATHENS 


75 


and the class below them they called “ the many ” or “ the bad. ” 
“The many” clamored and complained; but they were too 
ignorant and disunited as 
yet to defend themselves 
against the better-united 
“few”— until the way was 
made easier for them by the 
“tyrants.” 

Usually a tyrant was 
some noble, who, either 
from selfish ambition or 
from sympathy with the 
oppressed masses, turned 
against his own order to 
become a champion of the 
despised “many.” When 
he had made himself mas¬ 
ter of the City by their ^ Capital. From a. photograph 

. of a detail of the Parthenon (p. 107). 

aid, he tried to keep his 

power by surrounding himself with mercenaries and by ruining 
the nobles with taxes or even by exiling or murdering them. 

As the Greeks used the word, “tyrant” does not necessarily 
mean a bad or cruel ruler: it means merely a man who seized 
supreme rule by force. Many tyrants were generous, far¬ 
sighted rulers, building useful public works, helping to develop 
trade, encouraging art and literature. But some, of course, 
were selfish and vicious; and all arbitrary rule was hateful 
to the Greeks, — so that the oligarchs could usually persuade 
the people that the murder of a tyrant was a good deed. Ty¬ 
rants became common about 700 b.c. By 500, they had gone 
from every city in the Greek peninsula, though some were found 
still in outlying districts. When the tyrants were overthrown, 
the nobles had been so weakened that the people had a better 
chance. In the Ionian parts of Greece, the next step was com¬ 
monly a democracy. 

Now we will trace this change from “the rule of one” to 
“the rule of many” in Athens. 



The tyrants 


A step 
toward 
democracy 








76 


THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 


Kingship 
gives way 
to oligarchy 


The oli¬ 
garchs hold 
the land and 
enslave the 
poor 


Attempts at 
tyranny lead 
to conces¬ 
sions 


Written 

laws 


The heads of the “noble” families (the “well-born”) were 
in the habit of meeting in council on the hill called the Areop¬ 
agus (the hill of Ares, god of war). Very early this Council 
of the Areopagus began to choose “ archons” (“rulers”) from 
its own number to take over the command in war and other 
important parts of the royal power. Gradually the “king” 
became only the city-priest. 

By mortgages, by purchase perhaps, by fraud and force 
sometimes, the “well-born” had come also to own nearly all 
the land of Attica. Most of it was tilled for them by tenants 
who had lost their own farms on mortgages and who now 
paid five sixths their crops for rent. A bad season, or ravages 
by hostile bands of invaders, would force these tenants to 
mortgage themselves, since they had no more land to mortgage, 
in order to get food and seed. Interest was crushing, — eighteen 
or twenty per cent a year. If the debtors failed to pay, the 
noble who held the mortgage could drag them off in chains 
and sell them for slaves. Nor did the common tribesman have 
any part in the government. Even the Assembly had shrunk 
into a gathering of noble families to decide upon peace and 
war and to choose archons. “ The poor,” says Aristotle (a later 
Greek writer, in an account of this period), “were the very 
bondmen of the rich. . . . They were discontented with every 
feature of their lot . . . for . . . they had no share in any¬ 
thing. ” 

This discontent of the masses, and the quarrels among fac¬ 
tions of the nobles, gave opportunity to ambitious adventurers ; 
and (625 b.c.) one young noble seized the citadel of Athens 
with a band of troops, in order to make himself tyrant. The 
nobles rallied and crushed this attempt; but the peril induced 
them to make two concessions to the poorer masses: (1) 

They admitted to the Assembly all men who would buy their 
own heavy armor for war, and (2) they gave the people written 
laws. 

Athenian law had been a matter of ancient custom. It was 
not written down, and much of it was known only to the nobles. 
All judges (archons) were nobles; and they often abused their 






THE PEOPLE RULE AT ATHENS 


77 


power in order to favor their own class in law suits. The people 
had long clamored for written laws. The nobles had stubbornly 
resisted this demand, but now they gave way. In 621 b.c. 
Draco, one of the archons, engraved the old laws of Athens 
on wooden blocks and set them up where all might see them. 

The result was to make men feel how harsh the old laws were. 
The “laws of Draco,” it was said in later times, were “ written 
in blood rather than ink.” The Athenians now demanded new 
laws; and the renewed class struggles, together with the incom¬ 
petent rule of the nobles, brought the city to the verge of ruin 
in war with Little Megara. From this peril the city was 
finally saved by the courage and generalship of a certain Solon 
(one of the nobles, already famous as a philosopher and poet); 
and this brilliant success pointed to Solon as the possible savior 
of Athens from her internal perils. He was known to sympa¬ 
thize with the poor. In his poems he had long blamed the greed 
of the nobles and had pleaded for reconciliation between the 
warring classes. The Assembly now made him “ sole Archon, ” 
with supreme authority to remodel the government and the laws. 

Solon used this extraordinary power first to reform economic 
I evils. 1 (1) He gave to all tenants the full ownership of the 
lands which they had been renting from the nobles (and which 
in most cases they or their fathers had lost earlier through 
debt); and he forbade the ownership in future of more than a 
moderate amount of land by any one man. (2) He freed all 
Athenians who were in slavery in Attica, and forbade the en¬ 
slaving of any Athenian tribesman in future. (3) He can¬ 
celed all debts, so as to give distracted Athens a fresh start; 
but he resisted a wild clamor for the division of all property. 
In later times, the people celebrated these acts by a yearly 
“Festival of the Shaking-off of Burdens.” 

These reforms, it was soon seen, went deeper than merely to 
matters of property. (1) So many of the nobles lost their 
commanding wealth that before long they ceased to be a distinct 
class. Later distinctions in Athenian society were mainly 

1 Economic means “relating to property” ; it must not be confused with 
“economical.” 


Rise of 
Solon to 
leadership 


Sole Archon 
(dictator) 


Economic 

reforms 









78 


THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 


Direct 

political 

reforms 


Other 

reforms 


Solon 

abdicates 


A true 
democrat 


Plain, 
Shore, and 
Mountain 


Pisistratus, 

tyrant, 

560 B.C. 


between rich and poor. (2) Many of the old tenant farmers 
could afford to buy heavy armor (p. 76), and so could come also j 
into the Assembly on a level with its old members. 

And, besides these indirect political changes, Solon next < 
reformed the government directly. (1) He created a Senate j 
(chosen by lot, so that wealth should not control election) j 
to replace the Areopagus as the guiding part of the government. 
This body was to recommend measures to the Assembly. 

(2) He admitted to the Assembly all tribesmen, even the light¬ 
armed soldiers—-though these last were not yet allowed to J 
hold any offices. This enlarged Assembly, besides accepting or i 
rejecting proposals of the new Council, could now discuss 1 
them; and besides electing archons, it could try them and punish 
them for misgovernment. (3) The Areopagus was henceforth to j 
consist of ex-archons, and became merely a sort of law court. 

Solon also made it the duty of every father to teach his sons ' 
a trade; limited the wasteful extravagance at funerals — espe- j 
cially the amount of wealth that might be buried with the J 
dead; and replaced Draco’s bloody laws by milder punishments j 
for offenses. In one thing he intensified an unhappy tendency I 
of his age: he forbade women to appear in public gatherings. J 

To establish all these changes kept Solon busy through the j 
years 594 and 593 b.c. Then, to. the surprise of many, he 
resigned his power. He had really been an “elected tyrant,” 
or a “ dictator.” His acts were so popular with the great mass of 
the people that he might easily have made himself tyrant for j 
life. But for the first time in history , a man holding vast 'power 
voluntarily laid it down in order that the people might govern If 
themselves. 

But now a new strife of factions followed between the Plain j 
(the larger land-owners), the Shore (merchants), and the Moun- J 
tain (small farmers and shepherds) — until, 30 years later, Pisis- p: 
tratus, a near kinsman of Solon, made himself tyrant. His 
rule was mild and wise. He lived simply, like other citizens. 

He even appeared in a law court, to answer in a suit against 
him. And he always treated the aged Solon with deep respect, 






SOLON AND CLISTHENES 


79 


despite the latter’s steady opposition. Indeed, Pisistratus 
governed through the forms of Solon’s constitution / and enforced 
Solon’s laws, taking care only to have his own friends elected 
to the chief offices. He was more like the “boss” of a great, 
political “machine” than like a “tyrant.” 

Pisistratus encouraged commerce. Indeed he laid the basis 
for Athens’ later trade leadership by seizing for her the mouth 



Temple of Theseus (so-called) at Athens, now believed to have been 
built about 440 b. c. as a temple to Athene. During the Middle Ages it 
was used as a Christian church; hence its perfect preservation. See 
page 71 and Plate XX. 


to the Black Sea. He also enlarged and beautified Athens; 
improved the roads, and built an aqueduct to bring a supply of 
water to the city from the hills; and he drew to his court a 
brilliant circle of poets, painters, architects, and sculptors, from 
all Hellas. The first written edition of the Homeric poems is 
said to have been put together under his encouragement, and 
Thespis (p. 73) began Greek tragedy at the magnificent festivals 
now instituted to Dionysus (god of wine). 

1 Constitution, here and everywhere in early history, means not a written 
document, as with us, but the general usages of government in practice. 











Hippias and 
Hipparchus 

Clisthenes 
expels the 
tyrant 


Cleruchs: 
a new kind 
of colony 


Internal 
quarrels 
due to two 
evils 


Reforms of 
Clisthenes 


80 THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 

In 527, Pisistratus was succeeded by his unworthy sons 
Hippias and Hipparchus. Hipparchus was soon murdered, and 
later Hippias was driven out by a revolt led by Clisthenes, a 
noble whom he had exiled. 

“The Athenians,” says Aristotle, “now showed that men 
will fight more bravely for themselves than for a master.” The 
Euboeans and Thebans seized this moment of confusion to 
invade Attica from two sides at once; but the Athenians routed 
them in a double battle, pursued into Euboea, stormed Chalcis j 
there, and took for themselves its trade with Thrace (p. 70). 
Athens now began a new kind of colonization, sending four 
thousand citizens to possess the best land of Chalcis, and to 
serve as a garrison there. These men retained‘full Athenian I 
citizenship, besides having full control over their own settle- j 
ments in their own Assemblies. They were known as cleruchs , 
or out-settlers. In this way Athens found land for her surplus 
population, and fortified her influence abroad. 

Internal jealousies still weakened the city (1) between 
Plain, Shore, and Mountain, and (2) between the citizens and 
a large body of resident “ aliens,” drawn to Athens since Solon’s ] 
time by the growing trade of the city. These aliens were enter¬ 
prising and sometimes wealthy; still, though they lived in the 
city, they had no share in it. No alien could vote or hold office, ] 
or sue in a law court (except through the favor of some citizen), / 
or take part in a religious festival, or marry an Athenian, or even I 
own land in Attica. The city usually found it worth while to 
protect his property, in order to attract other strangers; but he 
had no secure rights. Nor could his son or any later descendant 
acquire any rights merely hy continuing to live in Athens. 

Clisthenes now came forward with proposals to remedy 
these evils. The Assembly approved his plan and gave him 
authority to carry it out. Accordingly, he marked off Attica 
into a hundred little divisions called demes. Each citizen 
was enrolled in one of these, and his son after him. Member¬ 
ship in a clan had always been the proof of citizenship. Now 
that proof was to be found in this deme-enrailment. Even the 






SPARTA AND MILITARISM 


81 


cleruchs (p. 80), and their descendants, kept their deme-enroll- 
ment, and, through that, their Athenian citizenship. 

The hundred demes were distributed among ten “ tribes,” or 
wards, so placed that men of the Shore and of the Mountain 
often found themselves in the same “ tribe.” The Assembly now 
voted by these “ territorial” tribes, and so the old factions died 
out. Moreover, while Clisthenes was distributing citizens among 
these new geographical units, he seized the chance to enroll the 
non-citizens also in the demes and so brought them into the citizen 
body. (This applied only to those aliens then in, Athens. In 
a few years another alien class grew up, with all the old disad¬ 
vantages. It was to be a long time before the world was to 
learn our device of easy “naturalization.”) 

Clisthenes also gave the Assembly more power. It now a new 
elected ten “generals” yearly, who took over most of the old ^“° c c r * tic 
authority of the archons; and it was made lawful for any voter 
to introduce new business. The “ light-armed ” citizens were still 
not eligible to office. Otherwise, Athens had become a democracy. 

Like Solon, Clisthenes might easily have made himself tyrant. 

But, with splendid faith, he chose to work, as Solon had done, 

to found government by the people. Clisthenes added also one 

more device to check faction. This was ostracism. Once a year Ostracism 

the Assembly was given a chance to vote by ballot (on pieces 

of pottery, “ostraka”), each one against any man whom he 

deemed dangerous to the state. If six thousand citizens took 

part in the vote, then that man against whom the largest number of 

the six thousand votes were cast had to go into exile. Even after 

all danger of a tyrant had ceased, ostracism was a convenient 

way for the people to relieve a leader whom they trusted from 

troublesome rivals or opponents. Such exile was felt to be 

perfectly honorable; and when a man came back from it, he 

took at once his old place in the public regard. 

IV. THE GROWTH OF MILITARY POWER AT SPARTA 

One of the petty Dorian states in the Peloponnesus was Sparta. 

It had no sea coast; but their devotion to war and certain 
habits of life (ascribed by legend to a great lawgiver Lycurgus) 







82 


THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 


Kings, 

Senate, 

Assembly 


Spartans 
and their 
subjects 


Spartan 

discipline 


opened to the Spartans a career of conquest. By 700 b.c. 
they were masters of all Laconia; soon after, they subdued 
Messenia; and then they brought all the rest of the Pelopon¬ 
nesus — except hostile Argos — into a military league of which 
they were the head (the Peloponnesian League). 

In Sparta the royal power was divided between two kings (the 
Spartan story explained this arrangement as due to the birth 
of twin princes), and real authority rested in the Senate of 
thirty elders. An Assembly, much like that of Homeric times, 
accepted or rejected proposals laid before it by the Senate, 
but could not amend or discuss them. Practically, Sparta 
was an oligarchy. 

Moreover, as a whole, the Spartans were a ruling class in the 
midst of subjects eight or ten times their number. They were 
a camp of some 9000 conquerors, with their families, living under 
arms in their unwalled city. They had taken for themselves 
the most fertile lands in Laconia; but they did no work. Each 
Spartan’s land was tilled for him by slaves, called Helots. 

These Helots were the descendants of the country- dwellers 
at the time of the Spartan conquest. They numbered perhaps 
five to one Spartan; and occasionally the Spartans carried out 
secret massacres of the more ambitious and intelligent among 
them. 

The inhabitants of the hundred small towns of Laconia were 
not slaves, but neither were they part of the Spartan state 
They tilled lands of their own, and carried on whatever other 
industry was found in Laconia. They kept their own customs, 
and managed the local affairs of their own towns — under the 
supervision of Spartan rulers; and they provided troops for 
Sparta’s army. 

Spartan mastery rested on a sleepless vigilance and on a 
rigid and brutal discipline. The aim of Sparta was to train 
soldiers. The family, as well as the man, belonged absolutely 
to the state. Officers examined each child, at its birth, to decide 
whether it was fit to live. If it seemed weak or puny, it was 
exposed in the mountains to die. If it was strong and healthy, 
it was returned to its parents for a few years. But after a boy 







SPARTA AND MILITARISM 


83 


reached the age of seven, he never again slept under his mother’s 
roof: he was taken from home, to be trained with other boys 
under public officers. 

Boys were taught reading and a little martial music, and 
were given training to strengthen the body and to develop 
self-control and obedience. On certain festival days, boys 
were whipped at the altars to test their endurance; and Plu¬ 
tarch (a Greek writer of the second century a.d.) states that 
often they died under the lash rather than utter a cry. (This 
custom was much like the savage “ sun-dance” of some American 
Indian tribes. Several other features of Spartan life seem to 
have been survivals of a barbarous period that the Spartans 
never wholly outgrew.) 

From twenty to thirty, the youth lived under arms in bar- 
i racks. Years of constant military drill made it easy for the 
Spartans to adopt more complex tactics than were possible 
for their neighbors. They were trained in small regiments 
and companies, so as to maneuver readily at the word of com¬ 
mand. This made them superior in the field. They stood to 
the other Greeks as disciplined soldiery always stands to un- 
; trained militia. At thirty the man was required to marry, in 
order to rear more soldiers; but he must still eat in barracks, 

• and live there most of the time. 

There was a kind of virtue, no doubt, in this training. The 
j Spartans had the quiet -dignity of born rulers. In contrast 
| with the noisy Greeks about them, their speech was brief and 
: pithy (“laconic” speech). They used only iron money. And 
their plain living made them appear superior to the weak in¬ 
dulgences of other men. Spartan women, too, kept a freedom 
j which unhappily was lost in other Greek cities. Girls were 
trained in gymnastics, much as boys were; and the women 
were famous for beauty and health, and for public spirit and 
patriotism. 

Still, the value of the Spartans to the world lay in the fact 
that they made a garrison for the rest of Greece , and helped save 
something better than themselves. If the Greeks had all been 
Spartans, we could afford to omit the study of Greek history. 


The good 
and evil 








“ Hellas ” 
and 

“ Hellenes ” 


Many small 
divisions 


A varied 
civilization 


Intercourse 
by the sea 


84 THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 

V. GEOGRAPHY AND ITS INFLUENCE 
(Map study, based on maps after pp. 52 and 70) 

Note the three great divisions: Northern Greece (Epirus and Thes¬ 
saly) ; Central Greece (a group of eleven districts, to the Isthmus of 
Corinth); and the Peloponnesus (the southern peninsula). Name the 
districts from Phocis south, and the chief cities in each. Which districts 
have no coast? Locate Delphi, Thermopylae, Tempe, Parnassus, 
Olympus, Olympia, Salamis, Ithaca, eight islands, three cities on the 
Asiatic side. Keep in mind that the islands shown are only a few of the 
many score that dot the Aegean. (The index usually tells on what map a 
geographical name can be found.) 

The Greeks called themselves Hellenes (as they do still). 
Hellas meant not European Greece alone, but all the lands 
of the Hellenes. Still, the European peninsula remained the 
heart of Hellas. Omitting Epirus and Thessaly (which had 
little to do with Greek history), the area of that European 
Greece is less than one half of that of New Brunswick. 

The islands and the patches of Greek settlements on dis¬ 
tant coasts made many distinct geographical divisions. Even 
little Greece counted more than twenty such units, each shut 
off from the others by its strip of sea and its mountain walls. 
Some of these divisions were about as large as an Ontario 
township, and the large ones (except Thessaly and Epirus) 
were only seven or eight times that size. 

The little states which grew up in these divisions differed 
widely from one another. Some became monarchies; some, 
oligarchies; some, democracies. In some, the chief industry 
became trade; in others, agriculture. In some, the people 
were slow and conservative; in others, enterprising and pro¬ 
gressive. Oriental states were marked by great uniformity; 
Greek civilization was marked by a wholesome diversity. 

Mountain people, living apart, are usually rude and conserva¬ 
tive ; but from such tendencies Hellas was saved by the sea — which 
brought Athens as closely into touch with Miletus (in Asia) 
as with Sparta or Olympia. The very heart of Greece is broken 
into islands and promontories, so that it is hard to find a spot 
thirty miles distant from the sea. Sailors and traders come in 


PLATE XVIII 




Above. — Modern Sparta from the north. In the background is seen the 
southern slope of Mt. Taygetus, through whose perilous passes Spartan 
armies marched to conquer their western neighbors, the Messenians. 

Below- — The Plain of the Eurotas, the site of ancient Sparta. The 
Spartans had no city walls and no important buildings, and so left little 
in the way of lasting relics of their life. 











PLATE XIX 



Yale or Tempe, in Thessaly 








INFLUENCE OF GEOGRAPHY 


85 


touch constantly with new manners and new ideas, and they 
are more likely to make progress, than a purely agricultural 
people. Exchanging commodities, they are ready to exchange 
ideas also. The seafaring Hellenes were “always seeking some 
new thing.” 

These early seekers found “new things ” within easy reach. 
This “most European of all European lands” lay nearest of all 
Europe to the old civilizations of Asia and Egypt. Moreover, 
it faced this civilized East rather than the barbarous West. 
On the other side, toward Italy, the coast of Greece is cliff or 
marsh, with only three or four good harbors. On the east, 
however, the whole line is broken by deep bays, from whose 
mouths chains of inviting islands lead on and on. In clear 
weather, the mariner may cross the Aegean without losing sight 
of land. 

Very important, too, was the appearance of the landscape. 
A great Oriental state spread over vast plains and was bounded 
by terrible immensities of desolate deserts. But, except in 
Thessaly, Greece contained no plains of consequence. It was 
a land of intermingled sea and mountain, with everything upon a 
moderate scale. There were no mountains so astounding as to 
awe the mind. There were no destructive earthquakes, or tre¬ 
mendous storms, or overwhelming floods. Oriental man had 
bowed in superstitious dread before the mysteries of nature, 
with little attempt to explain them. But in Greece, nature 
was not terrible; and men began early to search into her secrets. 
Oriental submission to tradition and custom was replaced by 
fearless inquiry and originality. In government, Oriental 
despotism gave way to Greek freedom. Greece had no parallel 
to the slavish Babylonian or Persian submissiveness before their 
kings, or to the Egyptian’s before his priests. 

No doubt, too, the moderation and variety of the world 
about them had a part in producing the many-sided genius of 
the people and their lively but well-controlled imagination. 
And the varied beauty of hill and dale and blue, sunlit sea, the 
wonderfully clear, exhilarating air, and the soft splendor of 
the radiant sky helped to give them deep joy in mere living. 


“ Always 
seeking 
some new 
thing ” 


Vicinity 
of older 
civilizations 
in the East 


Influence of 

physical 

geography 










86 


THE GREEKS BEFORE 500 B.C. 


A temperate 
climate 


Protected 
from 
Asiatic 
conquest by 
the Medi¬ 
terranean 


A civiliza¬ 
tion like our 
own 


Above all other peoples, they developed a love for harmony and 
proportion. Moderation became their ideal virtue, and they 
used the same word for good and beautiful. 

Like most of Europe, Greece has a more temperate climate 
than the semi-tropical river valleys of Asia, and food crops 
demand more cultivation. This called for greater exertion upon 
the part of man. The beginnings of civilization were slower 
in Europe; but man was finally to count for more there than in 
Asia. 

Finally, Greece was saved from Asiatic conquest largely by its 
position behind the broad moat of the Mediterranean. Persia 
subdued the Asiatic Greeks almost without a blow : against the 
European Greeks, we shall see, her supreme efforts failed. 

Most important of all, Greek civilization was essentially one 
with our own. The remains of Egyptian or Babylonian sculp¬ 
ture and architecture arouse our admiration and interest as 
curiosities; but they are foreign to us. With a Greek temple 
or a Greek poem we feel at home. It might have been built, 
or written in our own day. Some of our most beautiful build-’ 
ings are copied from Greek models. Our historians venerate 
the Greek Herodotus and Thucydides as their masters. Our 
children delight in the stories that the blind Homer chanted, and 
older students still find his poems a necessary part of literary 
culture. 


Exercise. — Make a table — in two parallel columns — of leading 
dates, approximate or fixed, in Oriental and in Greek history, down to 
500 b.c., when the two streams join. Can you justify the phrase 
“Most European of European lands” for Greece, by pointing out two 
or more respects in which important European characteristics are 
emphasized in Greek geography? Name two features of Greek geog¬ 
raphy favorable to any early civilization — as compared with Spain 
or France. Distinguish between Sparta and Laconia. Have you any 
buildings in your city in which Greek columns are used ? Of which 
order, in each case? Before the Greeks, the Persians built great roads ; 
so did the Romans afterwards; you will hear no mention of roadbuild¬ 
ing among the Greeks. Why? Find in the library two or three stories 
about Solon. The Iliad opens with a story of a pestilence in the Greek 
camp; the poet ascribes it to the arrows of the sun-god Apollo. Can 



INFLUENCE OF GEOGRAPHY 


87 


you find an explanation for such a pestilence in this text ? Explain the 
following terms : constitution; Helot; tyrant; Lycurgus; Clisthenes; 
Areopagus; archon; deme; clan; tribe; a “tribe of Clisthenes.” 

(To explain a term is to make such statements concerning it as will 
at least prevent the term being confused with any other. Thus, if the 
term is Solon, it will not do to say, “A Greek lawgiver/’ or “A lawgiver 
of the sixth century b.c.” The answer must at least say, “An Athenian 
lawgiver of about 600 b.c.” ; and it ought to say, “An Athenian lawgiver 
and democratic reformer of about 600 b.c.”) 

For Further Reading. — Davis’ Readings, I, 40 ff. (especially Nos. 
41-43 on the Delphic Oracle; 44, on Olympic Games — and see also Dr. 
Davis’ novel, A Victor of Salamis; 46, on founding a colony; and the 
extracts from Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus ). For modern authorities, 
Bury, 86-106, 116-117, 159-161, and especially 180-189 (on Solon); 
or Kimball-Bury’s Students' Greece, chs. ii-iii. 









Scroll from an Attic Vase Painting 


CHAPTER IX 


GREEKS AND PERSIANS 


East and 
West join 
battle 


We have seen how the Persians stretched their rule swiftly 
over the territory of all preceding empires, besides adding vast 
regions before unknown. By 500 b.c. they had advanced even 
into Europe across Thrace (map after p. 52) to the borders of 
Greece. The mighty world-empire next advanced confidently 
to add to its dominions the scattered groups of Greek cities, 
coveted for their ships and their trade. East and West joined 
battle. 

Asiatic Hellas, lacking the protection of a sea-moat, had been 
conquered by Cyrus the Persian some fifty years before, and 

now Carthage (a Phoeni¬ 
cian colony on the north 
coast of Africa) was incited 
by Persia to attack Magna 
Gallia; so that to oppose 
the master of the world 
there was left only the 
little peninsula we call 
Greece — and its strength 
was being wasted in in¬ 
ternal struggles, Athens at 
war with Aegina and Thebes, Sparta with Argos, and many 
other cities torn by class strife. 

By 492, Darius the Persian had collected a mighty army at 
the Hellespont, with a fleet to sail along the coast carrying 

88 



■ 




















MARATHON, 490 B.C. 


89 


supplies. This fleet was wrecked by a storm at the rocky 
promontory of Mount Athos, and the land army had no choice 
but to return to Asia. But in the spring of 490 a second expe¬ 
dition was embarked upon a new majestic fleet, which proceeded 
directly across the Aegean. Receiving the submission of the 
islands on its course, this expedition reached Euboea, destroyed 
the city of Eretria there, and then landed its troops on the plain 


First 
Persian 
expedition,, 
492 B.C., 
Mt. Athos 

Second 
expedition, 
490 B.C., 
Marathon 



Marathon To-day. — From a photograph. The camera stood a little above 
the Athenian camp in the Plan on the opposite page. That camp was in 
the first open space in the foreground, where the poplar trees are scattered. 
The land beyond the strip of water is the narrow peninsula running out 
from the “ Marsh ” in the Plan. 


of Marathon in Attica — especially to punish Athens, which had 
dared assist Ionian Greeks in a vain rebellion. 

From the rising ground where the hills of Mount Pentelicus 
meet the plain, ten thousand Athenians faced the Persian host. 
Sparta had promised help; and at the first news of Persian 
approach, a swift runner (Phidippides) had raced the 160 miles 
of rugged hill country to implore haste. He reached Sparta on 
the second day; but the dilatory Spartans waited a week, on 
the ground that an old law forbade them to set out on a military 






90 


WARS OF GREEKS AND PERSIANS 


Generalship 
of Miltiades 


Athens 

saved 


The meaning 
of Marathon 


expedition before the full moon. Athens was left to save her¬ 
self — and our Western world — as best she could, against 
many times her numbers of the most famous soldiery of the world. 

Miltiades, the Athenian commander, did not wait to be 
attacked, but himself took the offensive, moving his forces 
down the slope toward the Persian array. While yet an arrow’s 
flight distant, the advancing Greeks broke into a run, so as to 
cover the rest of the ground before the Persian archers could 
get in their deadly work. Once at close quarters, the heavy 
weapons of the Greeks gave them overwhelming advantage. 
Their dense array, charging with long, outstretched spears, by 
its sheer weight broke the light-armed Persian lines. The Per¬ 
sians fought gallantly, as always; but their darts and light 
scimitars made little impression upon the heavy bronze armor 
of the Greeks, while their linen tunics and wicker shields offered 
little defense against the thrust of the Greek spear. For a time, 
Persian numbers did force back the Greek center; but the two 
Greek wings (where Miltiades had massed his strength), hav¬ 
ing routed the forces in front of them, wheeled upon the Persian 
center, crushing both flanks at the same moment, and drove 
it in disorder to the ships. The Persians sailed away on a 
course that might lead to Athens, and so Miltiades hurried off 
Phidippides to announce the victory to the city. Already ex¬ 
hausted by the battle, the runner put forth supreme effort, 
raced the twenty-two miles of mountain road, shouted exult¬ 
antly to the eager, anxious crowds in the city street, — “ Ours the 
victory !” — and fell dead. (This famous run from the battle¬ 
field to the city is the basis of the modern “Marathon” race, 
in which champion athletes of all countries compete. The 
student will like to read Browning’s poem, Phidippides.) 

Meanwhile Miltiades was hurrying his wearied army, with¬ 
out rest, over the same road. Fortunately, the Persian fleet 
had to sail around a long promontory (map after p. 52), and 
when it appeared off Athens, the next morning, Miltiades had 
arrived. The Persians did not care to face again the men of 
Marathon, and the same day they set sail for Asia. 

Merely as a military event Marathon is an unimportant shir- 






THE EXPEDITION OF XERXES 


91 


mish; but, in its results upon human welfare, it is among the 
few really “decisive” battles of the world. Whether Egyptian 
conquered Babylonian, or Babylonian conquered Egyptian, 
mattered little in the long run. But it did matter whether 
or not the huge, despotic East should crush the new free life 
out of the West, Marathon decided that the West should 
live. For the Athenians themselves, the victory began a new era. 
The sons of the men who, against such odds, conquered the 
hitherto unconquered Persians, could find no odds too crush¬ 
ing, no prize too dazzling, in the years to come. 

Soon after Marathon, Egypt rebelled against Persia. This 
gave the Greeks ten years to get ready for the next Persian 
attack, but the only city to make any good use of the time 
was Athens. The democracy there had divided into two 
political parties. The conservative party wished to follow es¬ 
tablished customs without further change. Its leader at this 
time was Aristides, surnamed “the Just.” The radical party 
wished further reforms. It was led by Themistocles, less up¬ 
right than Aristides, but one of the most far-sighted statesmen 

! in history. 

Themistocles saw that Persia could not attack Greece suc¬ 
cessfully without command of the sea. Moreover, huge as 
the Persian Empire was, it was mainly an inland power; it 
could not so vastly outnumber the Greeks in ships as in men. 
Victory for the Greeks, then, was more likely on sea than on 
land. Accordingly he determined to make Athens a naval 
power. 

But, sea-farers though the Greeks were, up to this time they 
had not used ships much in war. The party of Aristides wished 
to hold to the old policy of fighting on land, and they had the 
glorious victory of Marathon to back their arguments. Finally, 
in 483, the two leaders agreed to let a vote of ostracism decide. 

The vote sent Aristides into banishment, and left Themis¬ 
tocles free to carry out his new policy. Rich veins of silver 
had recently been discovered in the mines of Attica. These 
mines belonged to the city. It had been proposed to divide the 


The ten 
years’ inter¬ 
val 


Preparation 
at Athens 


Aristides 
and Themis¬ 
tocles 


Themisto¬ 
cles and the 
fleet 






Third Per¬ 
sian expe¬ 
dition, 

480 B.C. 


Gloom in 
Greece 


The three 
possible 
lines of 
defense 


Greek plans 


92 WARS OF GREEKS AND PERSIANS 

income from them among the citizens; but Themistocles per¬ 
suaded his countrymen to reject this tempting plan, and instead 
to build a great fleet. In the next three years Athens became 
the greatest naval power in Hellas. 

Marathon had proved that no Persian fleet by itself could 
transport enough troops; so the Persians now tried again the 
plan of the first expedition (p. 88), but upon a larger scale, 
both as to army and fleet. To guard against another accident 
at Mt. Athos, a canal for ships was cut through the isthmus 
at the back of that rocky headland, — a great engineering work 
that took three years. Supplies, too, were collected at 
stations along the way; the Hellespont was bridged with chains 
of boats covered with planks; 1 and at last, in the spring of 480, 
Xerxes, the new Persian king, led in person a mighty host of 
many nations into Europe. A fleet of twelve hundred ships 
accompanied the army. No wonder that the Delphic Oracle 
warned the Athenians to flee to the ends of the earth. 

The Greeks had three lines of defense. The first was at the Vale 
of Tempe near Mount Olympus, where only a narrow pass 
opened into Thessaly. The second was at Thermopylae, where 
the mountains shut off northern from central Greece, except 
for a road only a few feet in width. The third was behind the 
Isthmus of Corinth. 

At a congress at Corinth (where Sparta was chosen leader) 
the Peloponnesians wished selfishly to abandon the first two lines. 
They urged that all patriotic Greeks should retire at once within 
the Peloponnesus, and fortify the Isthmus by an impregna¬ 
ble wall. This plan was as foolish as it was selfish. Greek 
troops might have held the Isthmus against the Persian land 
army; but the Peloponnesus was readily open to attack by sea, 
and the Persian fleet would have found it easier here than at 
either of the other lines of defense to land troops in the Greek rear 
without long losing touch with its own army. 

Still Xerxes was allowed to enter Greece without a blow — 
and was of course at once reinforced by excellent troops from 

1 Read Herodotus’ story of Xerxes’ wrath when the first bridge broke, and 
how he ordered the Hellespont to be flogged (Davis’ Readings , I, No. 64). 





THERMOPYLAE AND PLATAEA 93 

deserted northern Greece. Then in a half-hearted way, Sparta 
decided to make a stand at Thermopylae. The pass there 
was only some twenty feet wide between the cliff and the sea, 
and the only other path was one over the mountain, equally 
easy to defend. Moreover, the long island of Euboea ap¬ 
proached the mainland just opposite the pass, so that the Greek 
fleet in the narrow strait could guard the land army against 
having troops landed in the rear. 

The Greek fleet at this place numbered 270 ships, of which 
the Athenians furnished half. The land defense had been left 
to the Peloponnesian League, and the Spartan king, Leonidas, 
held the pass with three hundred Spartans and a few thousand 
allies. The main force of Spartans was again left at home , on 
the ground of a religious festival. 

The Persians reached Thermopylae without a check. Battle 
was joined at once on land and sea, and raged for three days. 
Four hundred Persian ships were wrecked in a storm, and the 
rest were checked by the Greek fleet in a sternly contested con¬ 
flict at Artemisium. On land, Xerxes flung column after col¬ 
umn of chosen troops into the pass, to be beaten back each time 
in rout. But on the third night a Greek traitor guided a force 
of Persians over the mountain path, which the Spartans had 
left only slightly guarded. Leonidas then sent home his allies, 
but he and his three hundred remained to die in the pass which 
their country had given them to defend. They charged joy¬ 
ously upon the Persian spears, and fell fighting, to a man. 

Sparta had shown no capacity to command in this great crisis. 
But at Thermopylae her citizens set an example of calm heroism 
that has stirred the world ever since. In later times the burial 
place of the Three Hundred was marked by this inscription, 
“ Stranger, go tell at Sparta that we lie here in obedience to her 
command. ” 

Xerxes advanced on Athens and was joined by most of central 
Greece. The Peloponnesians withdrew the army and fell back 
upon their first plan of building a wall across the Isthmus, 
and the admiral of the fleet (a Spartan, though Sparta furnished 
only 16 ships) was bent upon retiring to that position. By 


Thermopy¬ 
lae: loss 
of central 
Greece 


Athens 

destroyed 








94 


WARS OF GREEKS AND PERSIANS 


Strategy of 
Themisto- 
cles 


vehement entreaties, Themistocles persuaded him to hold the 
fleet for a day or two at Athens, so as to remove the women and 
children and old men to Salamis and other near-by islands. 
The Persians marched triumphantly through Attica, burning 
villages and farmsteads, and laid Athens and its temples in ashes. 

But Themistocles, in delaying the retreat of the fleet, planned 
for more than escape. He was determined that the decisive 



G , the Greek fleet at Salamis. PPP, the Persian fleet. X, the Throne 
of Xerxes. (The “Long Walls” were not built until later; p. 104.) 

battle should be a sea battle, and that it should be fought where 
the fleet then lay. No other spot so favorable for the smaller 
Greek fleet could be found as the narrow strait between the 
Athenian shore and Salamis. If the Greeks withdrew to Cor¬ 
inth, the fleet, too, would probably break up. Some ships 
would sail home to defend their own island cities; and others 
might join the Persians. Debate waxed fierce in the all-night 












THERMOPYLAE AND PLATAEA 


95 


council of the captains. The Corinthian admiral sneered that 
the allies need not regard a man who no longer represented a 
Greek city. Themistocles retorted that he represented two 
hundred ships, 1 and could make a city, or take one, where he 
chose; and, by this threat he forced the allies to remain. 

To make reconsideration impossible, the wily Themistocles Battle ot 
then made use of a strange stratagem. With pretended friend- Salamis 
ship, he sent a secret message to Xerxes, telling him of the weak¬ 
ness and dissensions of the Greeks, and advising him to block 
up the straits to prevent their escape. Xerxes took this treacherous 
advice. There was now no choice for the Greeks but to fight. 

The battle of Salamis, the next day, lasted from dawn to night, 
but the Greek victory was complete. 

“ A king sat on the rocky brow 2 
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis; 

And ships by thousands lay below, 

And men in nations, — all were his. 

He counted them at break of day, 

And when the sun set, where were they? ” 

The Persian chances, however, were still good. Xerxes fled Mardonius 
at once to Asia with his shattered fleet, but he left three hundred and Athens 
thousand chosen troops under his general Mardonius to winter 
in the plains of Thessaly. The Athenians began courageously 
to rebuild their city. Mardonius looked upon them as the 
soul of the Greek resistance, and early the next spring, he offered 
them an alliance , with many favors and with the complete restora¬ 
tion of their city at Persian expense. Terrified lest the Athenians 
should accept so tempting an offer, Sparta sent profuse promises 
of help, begging them not to desert Hellas. But the Athenians 
had already sent back the Persian messenger: “ Tell Mardonius 
that so long as the sun holds on his way in heaven, the Athe¬ 
nians will come to no terms with Xerxes.” Of Sparta they 
now asked only that she take the field early enough so that 
Athens need not be again abandoned without a battle. 

1 The fleet had now grown to 378 ships in all. 

2 A golden throne had been set up for Xerxes, that he might better view 
the battle (see map, p. 94). These lines are from Byron. 


96 


WARS OF GREEKS AND PERSIANS 


Spartan 
delay or 
treachery 


Battle of 
Plataea 


Sparta made the promise, but did not keep it. Mardonius 
approached rapidly. The Spartans found another sacred fes¬ 
tival before which it would not do to leave their homes; and 
the Athenians, in bitter disappointment, a second time took 
refuge at Salamis. Mardonius again burned Athens and laid 
waste the farms over all Attica. 

Sparta was still clinging to the stupid plan of defending only 
the Isthmus. Some of her keener allies, however, at last made 
her government see the uselessness of the wall at Corinth if the 
Athenians should be forced to join Persia with their fleet; and 
finally Sparta took the field with 50,000 Peloponnesian troops. 
The Athenian forces and other reinforcements raised the total 
of the Greek army to about 100,000, and the final contest with 
Mardonius was fought near the little town of Plataea. Spar¬ 
tan valor and the Athenian skill and dash won a victory which 
became a massacre. Only 3000 of the invaders escaped to Asia, 
and no hostile Persian ever again set foot in European Greece. 


Exercises. — 1. Summarize the causes of the Persian Wars. 2. De¬ 
vise and memorize a series of catch-words for rapid statement that shall 
suggest the outline of the story quickly. Thus : 

First expedition against European Greece, 492 b.c., through Thrace: 
Mount Athos. Second expedition, across the Aegean, two years later: 
capture of Eretria; landing at Marathon; excuses of Sparta; Miltiades 
and battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. (Let the student continue the series.) 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested: Davis’ Readings 
(I, Nos. 62-73) gives the whole story of Xerxes’ invasion as the Greeks 
themselves told it, in about 47 pages. Additional: Cox’s Greeks and 
Persians is an admirable little book. Many anecdotes are given in 
Plutarch’s Lives (“Themistocles” and “Aristides”). Bury is always 
good reading. 



Athenian Youth in the Great Religious Procession in Honor of 
Athene. From the Parthenon frieze (p. 107) ; now in the British Museum. 

CHAPTER X 

ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP, 478-431 B.C. 

(From the Persian War to the Peloponnesian War) 

After Plataea, the Athenians began once more to rebuild Athens 
their temples and homes. Themistocles, however, persuaded builds waJls 
them to leave even these in ashes and first surround the city 
with walls. Corinth, hoping basely to gain Athens’ old com¬ 
mercial prosperity for herself, urged Sparta to interfere; and, 
to her shame, Sparta did demand that the Athenians give up 
the plan: such walls, she said, might prove an advantage to 
the Persians if they should again occupy Athens. 

Attica, which had been ravaged so recently, was in no condi¬ 
tion to resist a Peloponnesian army. So the wily Themistocles 
gained precious time by having himself sent to Sparta to discuss 
the subject. There he put off the matter from day to day, 
with skillful excuses; and meanwhile the Athenians, neglect¬ 
ing all private matters, toiled at the walls with desperate haste 
— men, women, children, and slaves. No material was too 
precious. Inscribed tablets and fragments of sacred temples 
and even monuments from the burial grounds were seized for 

97 



98 THE GREEKS — ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 



the work. Then, when messengers informed Themistocles 
that the walls were high enough to be defended, he came before 
the Lacedaemonians 1 and told them bluntly that henceforward 
“they must deal with the Athenians as with men who knew 
quite well what was best for their own and the common good. ” 
Themistocles went on to establish the naval and commer¬ 
cial supremacy of Athens by two great measures: he secured 
a vote from the Assembly ordering that twenty new ships should 


Piraeus 

fortified 


be added each year to the war fleet; and he provided the city 
with a port secure against either storm or human attack. 

Athens lay some miles from the shore. Until a few years 
before, her only port had been an open and unsafe roadstead, 
— the Phalerum; but during his archonship in 493, Themis¬ 
tocles had given the city a magnificent harbor, by improving 
the inclosed bay of the Piraeus, at great expense. Now he 
persuaded the people to fortify this port on the land side with 
a massive wall of solid masonry, clamped with iron, sixteen 

1 Lacedaemonia is the name given to the' whole Spartan territory. See 
map after p. 52. Read in Thucydides (see p. 109) the story of how Themis¬ 
tocles provided for his own safety at Sparta. 


Ruins or the Walls or the Piraeus. 













THE PIRAEUS 


99 


feet broad and thirty feet high, so that old men and boys might 
easily defend it against any enemy. The Athenians now had 
two walled cities, each four or five miles in circuit, and only 
four miles apart; and the alien merchants, who dwelt at the 
Athenian ports, and who had fled at the Persian invasion, 
— many of them to Corinth, — came thronging back. 


The war with Persia was still going on, but only on the Ionian 
coast. In the early spring of 479, a fleet had crossed the Aegean 
to assist Samos in revolt against Persia. A Spartan commanded 
the expedition, but three fifths of the ships were Athenian. 
On the very day of Plataea these forces defeated a great Persian 
army at Mycale, on the coast of Asia Minor, and seized and 
burned the three hundred Persian ships. No Persian fleet 
showed itself again in the Aegean for nearly a hundred years. 

This victory of Mycale was a signal for the cities of Ionia to 
revolt against Persia. The Spartans, however, shrank from 
the task of defending Hellenes so far away, and proposed in¬ 
stead to remove the Ionians to European Greece. The Ionians 
refused to leave their homes, and the Athenians in the fleet 
declared that Sparta should not so destroy “ Athenian colonies. ” 
The Spartans seized the excuse to sail home, leaving the Athenians 
to protect the Ionians as best they could. The Athenians gal¬ 
lantly undertook the task, and began at once to expel the Per¬ 
sian garrisons from the islands of the Aegean. 

The allies now organized the Confederacy of Delos, so called 
because its seat of government and its treasury were to be at the 
island of Delos. Here an annual congress of deputies from the 
different cities of the League was to meet. Each city had one 
vote — like the American States under the old Articles of Con¬ 
federation. Athens was the “president” of the League, and 
her generals commanded the fleet. In return, she furnished 
nearly half of all the ships and men, — far more than her proper 
share. 

The purpose of the League was to free the Aegean completely 
from the Persians, and to keep them from ever coming back. 
The allies meant to make the union verpetual. Lumps of iron 


Victory at 
Mycale 


Sparta 
withdraws: 
Athens the 
leader 
against 
Persia 


Confederacy 
of Delos 


100 THE GREEKS —ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 


Growth of 
the League 


The 

“ League ” 
of equals 
becomes the 
Athenian 
Empire 


were thrown into the sea when the oath of union was taken, as 
a symbol that the oath should be binding until the iron should 
float. The League was composed mainly of Ionian cities, inter¬ 
ested in commerce. It was a natural rival of Sparta’s Dorian 
inland league. 

The League of Delos did its work well. Its chief military 
hero was the Athenian Cimon, son of Miltiades. Year after 
year, under his command, the allied fleet reduced one Persian 
garrison after another, until the whole region of the Aegean 
was free. The League came to include nearly all the islands 
of the Aegean and the cities of the northern and eastern coasts. 
The cities on the shores of the Black Sea, too, were added ; and, 
even more than before, the rich trade of that region streamed 
through the Hellespont to the Piraeus. 

Some members of the League soon began to shirk. As 
soon as the pressing danger was over, many cities chose to pay 
money, instead of furnishing ships and men. Athens, on the 
other hand, eagerly accepted both burdens and responsibili¬ 
ties. The fleet became almost wholly Athenian; and the 
congress at Delos became of little consequence. 

Then, here and there, cities began to refuse even the payment 
of money. This, of course, was secession. Such cities said 
that Persia was no longer dangerous, and that the need of the 
League was over. But the Athenian fleet, patrolling the Aegean, 
was all that kept the Persians from reappearing; and Athens, 
with good reason, held the allies by force to their promises. 
In 467, when the union was only ten years old, Naxos, one 
of the most powerful islands, refused to pay its contributions. 
Athens at once attacked Naxos, and, after a stern struggle, 
brought it to submission. But the conquered state was not 
allowed to return into the union. It lost its vote in the congress, 
and became a mere subject of Athens. 

From time to time, other members of the League attempted 
secession, and met a like fate. Athens took away their fleets, 
leveled their walls, and made them pay a tribute. Usually a 
subject city was left to manage its internal government in its 
own way; but it could no longer have alliances with other 




THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 


101 


cities, and sometimes its citadel was held by an Athenian gar¬ 
rison. The confederacy of equal states became an empire, with 
Athens for its “tyrant city.” The meetings of the congress 
ceased altogether. Athens removed the treasury from Delos, 
and began to use the funds and resources of the union for her 
own glory. (By 450 b.c. Lesbos, Chios, and Samos were the 



'Acharnian Gate; 




Dipylon Gate 


sJlffllpnosargag ?' 

ilvVVV 




Hill of 4? 

■ Colonus' 
;So- called, 
Theaeum ® 


Piraeus'- 
_Gate 4 


-J 

Stoa of Hadrian 


Diumean Gate ^ 

D I O MlE A 


Lyceum ?' 


^ .Tower of Winds 

O Q Serapeion 


Diocharis Gate 




Odeumfdf^ 

Tties 


ddeum^ 


Olympieuin . 


.CYDATH E N A E U M ^ 
JVIoti.. of Phiiop«ppus £ 


'u Still 


Itonian Gaits 


'pisum^ 


1. Parthenon 7. Eleusinium 

£. Ereohtheum 8. Council House 

8. Propj laea 9. Tholos 

4. Pry taneum 10. Temple of Furies 

5. Temple of Asclepius 11. Temple of Area 

G. Monument of 12. So-called Prison 

Lysicrates _ of Socrates 


STAOtA 


Map of Athens, with some structures of the Roman period. — The term 
“Stoa,” which appears so often in this map, means “porch” or portico. 
These porticoes were inclosed by columns, and their fronts along the 
Agora formed a succession of colonnades. Only a few of the famous build¬ 
ings can be shown in a map like this. The “Agora” was the great public 
square, or open market place, surrounded by shops and porticoes. It was 
the busiest spot in Athens, the center of the commercial and social life of 
the city, where men met their friends for business or for pleasure. 


only states of the League which had not become “ subject states.” 
Athens, however, had other independent allies that had never be¬ 
longed to the Delian Confederacy — like Plataea and Corcyra in 
Greece, Rhegium in Italy, and Segesta in Sicily.) 


Athens a 
“ tyrant 
city ” 


















102 THE GREEKS —ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 


And her 
work 


Athens at least continued faithfully to do the work for which 
the union had been created; and on the whole, despite 
the strong tendency to city independence, the subject cities 
seem to have been well content. In nearly all of them the 
ruling power became an Assembly like that at Athens; and 
the bulk of the people looked gratefully to Athens for protection 
against the oligarchs. 

Exercise. — If time permits, let students report to the class stories 
for this period about Themistocles, Aristides, and Cimon — from Plu¬ 
tarch, Bury, or other library material. The best short account of the 
period is chapter 1 of Cox’s Athenian Empire. 



Bay of Salamis. 





ll 



I 




The Acropolis, as “ restored ” by Lambert. 

CHAPTER XT 

THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE IN PEACE 

The history of Athens is for us the history of Greece. — Holm. 

In the fifth century b.c. the Athenian Empire was probably 
the mightiest state in the world. The cities of the Empire 
counted some three millions of people. The number seems small 
to us; but the population of the world was much smaller then 
than now, and these were all wealthy, progressive communities. 
Attica itself contained 300,000 people. Nearly half of these 
were slaves or aliens. 1 This left some 175,000 citizens, of whom 
35,000 were men fit for soldiers. Outside Attica, there were 
75,000 more citizens, who had been sent out as colonists to gar¬ 
rison outlying parts of the empire. 

The Empire was rich. Athens drew a yearly income of 
about four hundred talents ($440,000 in our values) from her 
Thracian mines and from the port dues and the taxes on alien 
merchants. The tribute from the subject cities amounted 
to $660,000. Athens used this money, too, as her own. If 
she had any excuse, it is that this tribute was much less than 
it would have cost the cities merely to defend themselves against 


1 A new class of alien residents had grown up since Clisthenes took those 
of his day into the citizen body. 



Population 
and wealth 


103 








104 


THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 


The Long 
Walls 


Growth of 
democracy 


Power of 
the elected 
Generals 


And the 
“ dema¬ 
gogues ” 


Pericles’ 

rule 


pirates, had Athenian protection been removed, and that the 
Asiatic Greeks paid only one sixth as much as they had formerly 
paid Persia. 

Athens had completed her fortifications by building the 
Long Walls to the Piraeus (map, p. 94). These walls were 
30 feet high and 12 feet thick — so that a chariot-road ran 
along the top. They made Athens absolutely safe from siege, so 
long as she could keep her supremacy on the sea; and they 
added to the city a large open space where the country people 
might take refuge if Attica were invaded. 

For thirty-three years (461-429 b.c.) the leading statesman 
of Athens was Pericles. Soon after Plataea, the poorest citizens 
had become eligible to office; and under Pericles the govern¬ 
ment continued to grow more and more democratic. Four 
steps in this development are worth noting. 

1. When Themistocles carried his great measures, like 
improving the Piraeus and building a fleet, he was an Archon. 
But when Pericles guided Athenian policy, he was a General 
(p. 81). The Generals had become the “ administration. ” 
It was they who usually proposed the levy of troops, the build¬ 
ing of ships, the raising of money, the making of peace or war. 
Any other citizen might propose these things; but the Assembly 
was most likely to listen to those whom it had chosen to plan for 
them. True, any prominent speaker, trusted by the people, 
was known as a “ demagogue, ” or “ leader of the people ” ; and, 
though out of office, a “ leader of the people ” exercised great 
influence. To make things work smoothly, it was desirable 
that the Board of Generals should contain the most trusted 
“ leader of the people ” for the time being. 

Pericles was recognized “demagogue” for many years, and 
was fifteen times elected “ president of the Board of Generals. ” 
Almost always he was the spokesman of that Board before 
the Assembly. He belonged to the ancient nobility of Athens, 
but to families that had always taken the side of the people. 
His mother was a niece of Clisthenes. His supremacy rested 



UNDER PERICLES 


105 


in no way upon flattering arts. His proud reserve verged on 
haughtiness, and he was rarely seen in public. His stately 
gravity and unruffled calm were styled Olympian by his admirers 
— who added that, like Zeus, he could on occasion overbear 
opposition by the majestic thunder of his oratory. The long 
and steady confidence given him honors the people of Athens 
no less than it honors Pericles himself. His noblest praise 
is that which he claimed for himself upon his deathbed, — that, 
with all his authority, and despite the bitterness of party strife, 

“no Athenian has had to put on mourning because" of me.” 

2. The Assembly met on the Pnyx, a sloping hill whose side The 
formed a kind of natural theater. There were forty regular AssembIy 
meetings each year, and many special meetings. Thus a pa¬ 
triotic citizen was called upon to give at least one day a week 

to the state in this matter of political meetings alone. The As¬ 
sembly had made great gains in power. All public officials had 
become its obedient servants. Even the Generals were its 
creatures, and might be “recalled” by it any day. No act of 
government was too small or too great for it to deal with. 

3. “Juries” of citizens had been introduced by Solon, and juries 
their importance became fully developed under Pericles. Six 
thousand citizens were chosen each year for this duty, — 
mostly from the older men past the age for active work. One 
thousand of these were held in reserve. The others were divided 

into ten jury courts of five hundred each. Such a jury was 
“both judge and jury”: it decided each case by a majority 
vote, and there was no appeal from its verdict. On the whole the 
system worked well. In particular, any citizen of a subject 
city, wronged by an Athenian officer, was sure of redress before 
these courts, — which was one reason why Athenian officials 
in subject cities behaved well. 

4. Since these courts tried political offenders, it was essential Payment for 
that they should not fall wholly into the hands of the rich. To 

prevent this, Pericles wisely introduced a small payment for democratic 
jury duty (about enough to buy one man’s food). Afterward device 
payment was extended to other political services — which was as 


106 


THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 


Political 
intelligence 
in Athens 


Architec¬ 
tural splen¬ 
dor of 
Athens 


The 

Acropolis 


proper and necessary as payment of congressmen and judges 
with us. 

About 10,000 Athenians were engaged at all times in public 
work. Scattered over the empire were some 700 leading officials 
to represent the imperial city, with many assistants. In the 
city itself, there were 700 city officials (overseers of weights 
and measures, harbor inspectors, and so on), 500 Councilmen, 
and the 6000 jurymen. Always about a fourth of the grown-up 
citizens were in the civil service, 1 and each Athenian could count 
upon serving his city at some time in almost every office. 

Such a system could not have worked without a high average 
of intelligence in the people. It did work well. Indeed it was 
far the wisest and the best that had been seen in any great state 
up to that time. 

Great as was the service of Hellas to the world in free govern¬ 
ment, still her chief glory lies in her art and her literature; 
and it was in the Athens of Pericles that these forms of Greek 
life developed most fully. Pericles made Athens the most 
beautiful city in the world, so that, ever since, her mere ruins 
have enthralled the admiration of men. Greek art was just 
reaching perfection; and everywhere in Athens, under the 
charge of the greatest artists of this greatest artistic age, arose 
temples, colonnades, porticoes, inimitable to this day. 

The center of this architectural splendor was the ancient 
citadel, the Acropolis. That massive rock now became the 
“ holy hill.” No longer needed as a fortification, it was crowned 
with white marble, and devoted to religion and art. On the 
west (the only side at all accessible) was built a stately stair¬ 
way of sixty marble steps, leading to a series of noble colon¬ 
nades and porticoes ( the Propylaea ) of surpassing beauty. 
From these the visitor emerged upon the leveled top of the 
Acropolis, to find himself surrounded by temples and statues, 
any one of which alone might make the fame of the proudest 

1 Civil service is a term used in contrast to military service. Our post¬ 
masters are among the civil servants of the Dominion, as a city engineer 
or a fireman is in the city civil service. 





I MS 

WlHI 










































































































PLATE XX 



The Acropolis of Athens To-day — from the west. The temple in the foreground on the lower 

level (to the left) is the so-called Temple of Theseus (p. 79). 





INTELLECT AND ART 


107 


modern city. Just in front of the entrance stood the colossal 
bronze statue of Athene the Champion, whose broad spear point, 
glittering in the sun, was the first sign of the city to the mari¬ 
ner far out at sea. On the right of the entrance, and a little 
to the west, was the temple of the Wingless Victory; and near 
the center of the open space rose the larger structures of the 
Ereohtheum and the Parthenon (Plate XXII and “Plan” facing 
page 106). 

The Parthenon (“maiden’s chamber”) was the temple of The 
the virgin goddess Athene. It remains peerless in loveli- Parthenon 
ness among the buildings of the world. It was in the Doric 
style and of no great size, — only some 100 feet by 250, while 
the marble pillars supporting its low pediment rose only 34 
feet from their base of three receding steps. The effect was 
due, not to the sublimity and grandeur of vast masses, but 
to the perfection of proportion, to exquisite beauty of line, 
and to the delicacy and profusion of ornament. 

In the pediments were carved fifty life-size or colossal statues; 
and, within the colonnade, around the entire wall of the inner 
building, ran a broad band of relief sculptures, some four feet 
high, containing nearly 500 figures. This “frieze” represented 
an Athenian procession carrying offerings to the patron goddess 
Athene. All these sculptures, large or small, were finished 
with perfect skill, even in those parts so placed that no observer 
could see them “without going on the roof or opening a wall.” 

This ornamentation was cared for by Phidias and his pupils. Greek 
Phidias still ranks as the greatest of sculptors. Much of the scul P ture 
work on the Acropolis he merely planned, but the great statues 
of Athene were his special work. Besides the bronze statue, 
there was, within the temple, an even more glorious one in gold 
and ivory, smaller than the other, but still five or six times larger 
than life. (When the Turks held Greece, they used the Parthe¬ 
non as a powder house. In 1687 an enemy’s cannon ball ex¬ 
ploded the pow'der, and left the temple in ruins, much as we 
see it to-day. About the year 1800, Lord Elgin secured most 
of the sculptures from the ruin for the British Museum, where 
they are known now as the Elgin Marbles.) 





108 


THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 


The drama 


Aeschylus, 

Sophocles, 

Euripides 


Aristoph¬ 

anes 


The theater 



In the age of Pericles, the chief form of poetry became the 
tragic drama — the highest development of Greek literature. 
The drama began in the songs and dances of a chorus in honor 
of Dionysus, god of wine, at the spring festival of flowers and 
at the autumn vintage festival. The leader of the chorus 

came at length to recite stories, 
between the songs. Thespis 
at Athens, in the age of Pisis- 
tratus, haa developed this 
leader into an actor, — apart 
from the chorus and carrying 
on dialogue with it. Now 
Aeschylus added another actor, 
and his younger rival, Sopho¬ 
cles, a third. All the action 
had to be such as could have 
taken place in one day, and 
without change of scene. Aes¬ 
chylus, Sophocles, and their 
successor, Euripides, are the 
three greatest Greek drama¬ 
tists. Together they produced 
some two hundred tragedies, 
of which thirty-one survive. 

Comedy also grew out of the 
worship of the wine god, — not 
from the great religious festi¬ 
vals, however, but from the 
rude village merrymakings. 
“ Attic comedy” kept traces of 
this rude origin in occasional 
coarseness; and it was sometimes misused, to abuse men like 
Pericles and Socrates. Still, its great master, Aristophanes, for 
his wit and genius, must always remain one of the bright names 
in literature. 


Sophocles. — A portrait statue, now 
in the Lateran Museum at Rome. 


Every Greek city had its “ theater” —- a semicircular arrange¬ 
ment of rising seats, often cut into a hillside, with a small stage 









PLATE XXI 



Above. — Theater op Dionysus at Athens To-day. 

Below. — The Stage of the Theater, showing the sculptured figures 
about it. — From the front. 





PLATE XXII 




Above. — The Parthenon To-day — West Front. 


Below. — A Portico of the Erechtheum (“ Porch of the Maidens”). 
The use of human figures for columns to sustain weight is rare in 
Greek architecture; but in this case the artist secured an effect of 
serene repose. This temple to Athene was built during the stress of 
the Peloponnesian War, upon the site of an ancient shrine to the 
goddess in a palace of a legendary King Erechtheus. 














INTELLECT AND ART 


109 


at the open side of the circle for the actors. There was no 
inclosed building, except sometimes a few rooms for the actors, 
and there was none of the gorgeous stage scenery which has 
become a chief feature of our theaters. Neither did the Greek 
theater run every night. Performances took place at only 
two periods in the year — at the spring and autumn festivals 
to Dionysus — for about a week each season, and in the daytime. 

The great Theater of Dionysus, in Athens, was on the south¬ 
east slope of the Acropolis — the rising seats, 1 cut in a semicircle 
into the rocky bluff, looking forth, beyond the stage, to the hills 
of southern Attica and over the blue waters of the Aegean. 

It could seat almost the whole free male population. 

Pericles secured from the public treasury the admission fee 
to the Theater for each citizen who chose to ask for it. The 
Greek stage was the modern pulpit and press in one, and this 
free admission was for religious and intellectual training, rather 
than for amusement. 

The art of public speech was studied zealously by all who Oratory 
hoped to take part in public affairs. Among no other people 
has oratory been so important and so effective. For almost 
two hundred years, from Themistocles to Demosthenes (p. 134), 
great statesmen swayed the Athenian state by their sonorous 
and thrilling eloquence ; and the citizens, day after day, packed 
the Pnyx to hang breathless for hours upon the persuasive 
lips of their leaders. 

Prose literature now began, with history as its leading form. History 
The three great historians of the time are Herodotus, Thucydides, 
and Xenophon. For charm in story-telling they have never 
been excelled. Herodotus was a native of Halicarnassus in 
Asia Minor. He traveled widely, lived long at Athens as the 
friend of Pericles, and finally in Italy completed his great History 
of the Persian Wars, with an introduction covering the world’s 
history up to that event. Thucydides, an Athenian general, 
wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War (p. 124 ff.) in 

1 The stone seats were not carved out of the hill until somewhat later. 

During the age of Pericles, the men of Athens §at all over the hillside, on 
the ground or on stools which they brought with them. 


110 


THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 


Philosophy 


Compared 
with the 
earlier 
philosophy 


Socrates 


which he took part. Xenophon also was an Athenian. He 
completed the story of the Peloponnesian War, and gave us, 
with other works, the Anabasis, an account of the expedition 
of the Ten Thousand Greeks through the Persian Empire in 
401 b.c. (p. 130). 

The age of Pericles saw also a rapid development in philos¬ 
ophy, — and this movement, too, had Athens for its most 
important home. Anaxagoras of Ionia, the friend of Pericles, 
taught that the ruling principle in the universe was Mind: 
“ In the beginning all things were chaos; then came Intelli¬ 
gence, and set all in order.” He also tried to explain comets 
and other strange natural phenomena, which had been looked 
upon as miraculous, and he amazed men of his time most of all 
by asserting that the sun was a red-hot mass probably as large 
as the Peloponnesus. 

The philosophers of the sixth century (p. 73) had tried to 
answer the question, — How did the universe come to be ? The 
philosophers of the age of Pericles asked mainly, — How does 
man know about the universe? That is, they tried to explain 
the working of the human mind. These early attempts at explana¬ 
tion were not very satisfactory; so next came the Sophists, 
to declare all such explanations beyond the power of the human 
mind. Man, they held, cannot reach the truth itself, but must 
be content to know only appearances. 

Then came Socrates to complete the circle of ancient philosophy. 
Like the Sophists, he abandoned the attempt to understand 
the material universe, and ridiculed gently the attempted explana¬ 
tions of his friend, Anaxagoras. But he really differed widely 
from the Sophists. He sought knowledge about himself and 
his duties. He took for his motto, “Know thyself,” and consid¬ 
ered philosophy to consist in right thinking upon human conduct. 
True wisdom, he taught, is to know what is good and to do what 
is right; and he tried to make his followers see the difference 
between justice and injustice, temperance and intemperance, 
virtue and vice. 

Socrates was a poor man, an artisan who carved little images 




SOCRATES 


111 


of the gods for a living; and he constantly vexed his wife, The “ So- 
Xanthippe, by neglecting his trade, to talk in the market place. »> 

He wore no sandals, and dressed meanly. His large bald head 
and ugly face, with its thick lips and flat nose, made him good 
sport for the comic poets. His practice was to entrap unwary 
antagonists into public conversation by asking innocent-look¬ 
ing questions, and then, by the inconsistencies of their answers, 
to show how shallow their opinions were. This proceeding 
afforded huge merriment to the crowd of youths who followed 
the bare-footed philosopher, and it roused up bitter enemies 
among his victims. But his beauty of soul, his devotion to 
knowledge, and his largeness of spirit make him the greatest 
name in Greek history. 

When seventy years old (399 b.c.) Socrates was accused of Socrates’ 
impiety and of corrupting the youth, and was condemned to 
death. For thirty days he remained in jail, conversing daily 
in his usual manner with groups of friends who visited him. 

Two of his disciples (Plato and Xenophon) have given us ac¬ 
counts of these talks. On the last day, the theme was immor¬ 
tality. Some of the friends fear that death may be an endless 
sleep, or that the soul, on leaving the body, may “issue forth 
like smoke . . . and vanish into nothingness.” But Socrates 
comforts and consoles them, — convincing them, by a long 
day’s argument, that the soul is immortal, and picturing the 
lofty delight he anticipates in questioning the heroes and sages 
of olden times when he meets them soon in the abode of the blest. 

Then, just as the fatal hour arrives, one of the company (Crito) 
asks, “In what way would you have us bury you?” Socrates 
rejoins: 

“ ‘In any way you like : only you must first get hold of me, and take 
care that I do not walk away from you.’ Then he turned to us, and 
added, with a smile: ‘ I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same 
Socrates who has been talking with you. He fancies that I am another 
Socrates whom he will soon see a dead body — and he asks, How shall 
he bury me? I have spoken many words to show that I shall leave 
you and go to the joys of the blessed. ... Be of good cheer, then, my 
dear Crito, and say that you are burying my body only — and do with 
that what is usual, or as you think best. ’ ” 


112 


THE GREEKS —AGE OF PERICLES 


Extent of 
Athenian 
culture 


Pericles’ 
glorification 
of Athens 


Friends of Socrates had made arrangements for his escape 
from prison before the day set for his execution; but he stead¬ 
fastly refused to go. To their pleadings he answered only by 
a playful discourse to the effect that “ Death is no evil; but for 
Socrates to ‘ play truant ’ and injure the laws of his country, 
would be an evil.” And so he drank the fatal hemlock with a 
gentle jest upon his lips. His condemnation is the greatest 
blot upon the intelligence of the Athenian democracy. 

In the fifth century b.c. Athens gave birth to more great 
men of the first rank, it has been said, than the whole world has 
ever produced in any other equal period of time, and to that 
same center there swarmed other famous men from less-favored 
parts of Hellas. Despite the condemnation of Socrates, no 
other city in the world afforded such freedom of thought, and 
nowhere else was ability, in art or literature, so appreciated. 
The names that have been mentioned give but a faint impres¬ 
sion of the splendid throngs of brilliant poets, artists, philoso¬ 
phers, and orators, who jostled one another in the streets of 
the beautiful city that clustered round the temple-crowned 
Acropolis. During the second year of the Peloponnesian War 
(p. 124), Pericles delivered a great oration in honor of the Athe¬ 
nian dead, — a splendid glorification of the Athenian spirit 

“We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; and we culti¬ 
vate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for 
talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avow 
poverty with us is no disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing 
to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because 
he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are en¬ 
gaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We regard a man 
who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a mis¬ 
chievous character. . . . And we shall assuredly not be without wit¬ 
nesses. There are mighty monuments of our power which will make 
us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages. . . . For we have com¬ 
pelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and have 
everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our 
enmity. . . . Athens is the school of Hellas.” 

Three limitations in this noble culture must be noted : 

1. It rested on slavery. The main business of the citizen 







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WEAK POINTS IN THEIR CULTURE 


113 


was government and war. Trades and commerce were left 
largely to the free non-citizen class, and unskilled hand labor 
was performed mainly by slaves. As a rule, it is true, this 
slavery was not harsh. The slaves were frequently Greeks, of 
the same speech and culture as their masters; but in some ways, 
this made their lot all the harder to bear. There was always 
the possibility of cruelty; and in the mines, even in Attica, 
the slaves were killed off brutally by merciless hardships. 

2. Greek culture was for males only. It is not likely that 
the wife of Phidias or of Thucydides could read. The women 
of the working classes, especially in the country, necessarily 
mixed somewhat with men in their work. But among the 
well-to-do, women had lost the freedom of the simple and rude 
society of Homer’s time, without gaining much in return. Ex¬ 
cept at Sparta (p. 83) they appeared rarely on the streets, and, 
even at home, passed a secluded life in separate women’s apart¬ 
ments. (The rule is merely emphasized by its one exception. 
No account of the Athens of Pericles should omit mention of 
Aspasia. She was a native of Miletus, and had come to Athens 
as an adventuress. There she won the love of Pericles. Since 
she was not an Athenian citizen he could not marry her; but, 
until his death, she lived with him in all respects as his wife — 
a union not grievously offensive to Greek ideas. The dazzling 
wit and beauty of Aspasia made her home the focus of the 
intellectual life of Athens. Anaxagoras, Socrates, Phidias, 
Herodotus, delighted in her conversation ; and Pericles consulted 
her on the most important public matters. But she is the only 
woman who need be named in Greek history after the time of 
Sappho.) 

3. With all their intellectual power, the Greeks of Pericles’ 
day had not thought of finding out the secrets of nature by 
experiment. They had only such knowledge of the world 
about them as they had chanced upon, or such as they could 
attain by observation of nature as she showed herself to them. 
To ask questions, and make nature answer them, by systematic 
experiment, is a method of reaching knowledge which belongs, 
in any marked degree, only to recent times. But, before the 


Limitations 
in Greek 
culture 


114 


THE GREEKS —AGE OF PERICLES 


Greeks, men had reached about all the mastery over nature that 
was possible without that method. The Greek mind achieved 
wonders in literature and art and philosophy; but it did little 
to advance man’s power over nature. 

To make the Greek world at all real to us, we must think 
of even the best houses without plumbing — or drains of any 
sort; beds without sheets or springs; rooms without fire; 
traveling without bridges and without even a stagecoach; 
shoes without stockings; clothes without buttons, or even a 
hook and eye. The Greek had to tell time without a watch, 
and to cross seas without steamships or wireless telegraphy 
or even a compass. He was civilized without being what we 
should call “ comfortable.” 

Perhaps all the more, he felt keenly the beauty of sky and hill 
and temple and statue and the human form. But in one respect 
this lack of control over nature was exceedingly serious. With¬ 
out modern scientific knowledge, and modern machinery, it 
has never been possible for man to produce wealth fast enough 
so that many could take sufficient leisure for refined and graceful 
living. There was too little wealth to go round. The civilization 
of the few rested necessarily upon slavery. This third limita¬ 
tion was the cause of the first. 

Religion The moral side of Greek culture falls short of the intellectual 

and morals Their religion had little to do with conduct toward men. 

Their good sense and clear thinking had freed their religion 
from the grossest features of Oriental worship; but their moral 
ideas are to be sought mainly in their philosophy and literature, 
rather than in their stories about the gods. They accepted 
frankly the search for pleasure as natural and proper. Self- 
sacrifice had little place in their ideal; but they did deeply 
admire the beauty of self-control and moderation. No society 
ever produced so many great men, but many societies have 
produced better men. 

At the same time, a few Greek teachers give us some of the 
noblest morality of the world, as the following brief quotations 
show: 





RELIGION AND MORALS 


115 


a. From the Odyssey. —“Verily the blessed gods love not fro ward 
deeds, but reverence justice and righteous acts.” 

b. From Aeschylus. — “Justice shines in smoke-grimed houses and 
holds in regard the life that is righteous; she leaves with averted eyes 
the gold-bespangled palace which is unclean, and goes to the abode that 
is holy. 

c. Antigone, the heroine of a play by Sophocles, had knowingly in¬ 
curred the penalty of death by disobeying an unrighteous command of 
a wicked king. She justified her deed proudly, — 

“Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough 
That thou, a mortal man, should’st overpass 
The unwritten laws of God that know no change .” 

d. A Prayer of Socrates (from Plato’s Phaedrus ).— “Beloved Pan, 
and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the in¬ 
ward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I 
reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of 
gold as none but the temperate can carry.” 



Greek Girls at Play — from a vase- 
painting. 








CHAPTER XII 


The home 


EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE AGE OF PERICLES 

Greek houses, even those of the rich, were simple. The poor 
could not afford more; and the rich man thought his house of 
little account. It was merely a place to keep his women folk 
and young children and some other valuable property, and to 
sleep in. His real life was passed outside. 

The poor man’s house was a one-story mud hut; and even a 
“well-to-do” house was merely a wooden frame, covered with 
sun-dried clay. Houses were built flush with the street, and on 
a level with it, — without even sidewalk or steps between. 
The door, too, usually opened out — so that passers-by were 
liable to bumps, unless they kept well to the middle of the 
narrow street. On the opposite page is given the ground plan of 
one of the few private houses of the fifth century which has been 
unearthed in a state to be traced out. This house was at 
Delos; and it was something of a mansion, for the times. 

The street door opened into a small vestibule (A), about six feet by 
ten. This led to a square “hall” (D, D, D, D), which was the central 
feature of every Greek house of importance. In the center of the hall 
there was a “court,” open to the sky, and surrounded by a row of columns 
ten feet high. The columns were to uphold their side of the hall ceiling, 
— since the hall had no wall next the court. The court was paved with 
a beautiful mosaic. (Commonly, however, all floors in private houses 
were made of concrete, or merely of beaten earth.) 

From the hall there opened six rooms more. The largest ( H) was 
the dining room and kitchen, with a small recess for the chimney in one 
corner. The other rooms were store rooms, or sleeping rooms. Any 
overflow of guests could be taken care of by couches in the hall. This 
whole floor was for males only. There was an upper story for the 
women, reached by a steep stairway in the lower hall, and projecting, 
perhaps, part way over the street. If a rich man’s house had only one 
story, there was at the rear a second half for the women, connected 
with the men’s half by a door in the partition wall. Sometimes there 
was a small walled garden at the back. 

116 


EVERYDAY LIFE 


117 


City houses were crowded close together, with small chance 
for windows on the sides. Sometimes narrow slits in the wall 
opened on the street. Otherwise, except for the one street 
door, the front was a blank wall. The Greeks did not have 
glass panes for windows. The houses were dark; and most of 
the dim light came from openings on the central court. 

In cold damp weather (of which, happily, there was not much), 
the house was exceedingly uncomfortable. The kitchen had 
a chimney; but for other rooms the only artificial heat came 



Plan of a Fifth-Century Delos House. — After Gardiner and Jevons. 

from small fires of wood or charcoal in braziers, — such as are 
still carried from room to room, on occasion, in Greece or Italy 
or Spain. The choking fumes which filled the room were not 
much more desirable than the cold, which they did little to drive 
away. Sometimes a large open fire in the court gave warmth 
to the hall. At night, earthenware lamps, on shelves or brackets, 
furnished light. There were no bathrooms, and no sanitary 
l conveniences. 

The residence streets were narrow and irregular, — hardly 
more than crooked, dark alleys. They had no pavements; 
they were littered with all the filth and refuse from the houses. 
Splendid as were the 'public portions of Athens, the residence 
quarters were much like a squalid Oriental city of to-day. 


Discomfort 


Street 

squalor 











































118 


THE GREEKS —AGE OF PERICLES 


The Greek 
family 



Public fountains, supplied by aqueducts, furnished pure drink¬ 
ing water; but there was no provision for sewers or for flush¬ 
ing the streets. Wealthy men were beginning to build more 
comfortably on the hills near the city; but war kept this prac¬ 
tice from becoming common. 

In the Oriental lands a man was at liberty to have as many 
wives in his household as he chose to support. Poor men usually 
were content with one; but, among the rich, polygamy was 
the rule. A Greek had only one wife. Imperfect as Greek family 
life was, the adoption of “ monogamy ” was a great step forward. 


Greek Women. — From a bowl painting. 

Marriage was arranged by parents. The young people as a 
rule had never seen each other. Girls were married very young 
— by fifteen or earlier. Not till the evening before her marriage 
did the girl put away her doll, — offering it then solemnly on 
the shrine of the maiden goddess Artemis. Among the wealthy 
classes, the wives spent the rest of their days indoors — ex¬ 
cept on some rare festival occasions. The model wife learned to 
oversee the household (Davis’ Readings , I, No. 99); but in 
most homes this duty was left to trained slaves, and the wife 
dawdled away the day listlessly at her toilet or in vacant idle¬ 
ness, much as in an Eastern harem to-day. The vase pictures 
show her commonly with a mirror. Unwholesome living led to 



EVERYDAY LIFE 


119 


excessive use of red and white paint, and other cosmetics, for 
the complexion. 

Law and public opinion allowed the father to “expose” a 
new-born child to die. This practice was common among the 
poor, especially for girl babies. (Boys would offer sacrifices, 
in time, at the father’s tomb, and they could fight for the city.) 
Till the age of seven, boys and girls lived together in the women’s 
apartments. Then the boy began his school life. 


Most of the hand labor was busied in tilling the soil. The 
farmer manured his land skillfully. Some districts, like Cor¬ 
inth and Attica, could not furnish food enough for their popu¬ 
lations from their own soil. Athens imported grain from other 
parts of Hellas and from Thrace and Egypt. This grain was 
paid for, in the long run, by the export of her factories. (Davis’ 
Readings, I, No. 76, gives a list- of twenty-five handicrafts 
used in beautifying the Acropolis.) In these factories, the 
place taken now by machinery was taken then, in large part, 
by slaves. The owner of a factory did not commonly own all 
the slaves employed in it. Any master of a skilled slave might 
“ rent” him out to a factory. 

The villages of Attica, outside Athens, were mainly occupied 
by farmers and farm laborers. Commerce was centered in the 
Piraeus. In Athens, the poorer classes worked at their trades 
or in their shops from sunrise to sunset — with a holiday about 
one day in three. Their pay was small, because of the compe¬ 
tition of slave labor; but they needed little pay to give them 
most of the comforts of the rich — except constant leisure. 
The Greek artisan worked deliberately and took a noble pride in his 
work. The stone masons who chiseled out the fluted columns 
of the Parthenon felt themselves fellow workmen with Phidias. 

A rich Athenian citizen owned lands outside the city, worked 
by slaves and managed by some trusted steward. Probably 
he also had money invested in trading vessels, though he left 
their management to agents in the Piraeus. Some revenue he 
drew from money at interest with the bankers; and he drew 
large sums, too, from the “rent” of slaves to the factories. 


Occupations 


Work of the 
poor 


Delight in 
work 


The rich 



Daily life 
of a Greek 
gentleman 


120 THE GREEKS —AGE OF PERICLES 

Like the poorer citizens, the rich man rose with the sun. A 
slave poured water over his face and hands, or perhaps over his 
naked body, from a basin. (Poor men like Socrates bathed at 
the public fountains.) He then broke his fast on a cup of wine 
and a dry crust of bread. Afterward, perhaps he rode into the 
country, to visit one of his farms there, or for a day’s hunting. 

If, instead, he remained within the city, he left his house 
at once, stopping, probably, at a barber’s to have his beard 
and finger nails attended to, as well as to gather the latest 
news from the barber’s talk. The latter half of the morning 
would find him strolling through the shaded arcades about the 
market place, among throngs of his fellows, stopping for conver¬ 
sation with friends — with whom, sometimes, he sat on the 
benches interspersed among the colonnades. At such times, 
he was always followed by one or two handsome slave boys, 
to run errands. At midday, he returned home for a light 
lunch. In the afternoon, if a student, he took to his rolls of 
papyrus; if a statesman, perhaps he prepared his speech for 
the next meeting of the Assembly; sometimes, he visited the 
public gaming houses. Then, after exercise in a gymnasium, 
he bathed at a public bathing house, hot, cold, or vapor bath, 
as his taste decided; and here again he held conversation 
with friends, while resting, or while the slave attendants rubbed 
him with oil and ointment. 

Toward sunset, he once more visited his home, unless he was 
to dine out. If the evening meal was to be, for a rare occasion, 
at home and without guests, he ate with his family, — his wife 
sitting at the foot of the couch where he reclined; and soon after¬ 
ward he went to bed. More commonly, he entertained guests — 
whom he had invited to dinner as he met them at the market 
place in the morning — or he was himself a guest elsewhere. 

Such days were not allowed to become monotonous at Athens. 
For several years of his life, the citizen was certain to be busied 
most of the time in the service of the state (p. 106). At other 
times, the meetings of the Assembly and the religious festivals 
and the theater took at least one day out of every three. 

The evening banquet played a large part in Greek life. 


EVERYDAY LIFE 


121 



The Wrestlers. — A copy of a famous statue by Myron, a younger con¬ 
temporary of Phidias. Myron excelled in depicting action in marble, 
where his Greek predecessors for the most part had represented their 
subjects in repose. Cf. Plate after 184. 

before each couch, on which they afterward placed course after 
course of food. 

The meals were simple. Food was cut into small pieces in 
the kitchen. No forks or knives were used at table. Men 
ate with a spoon, or, more commonly, with the fingers; and 


As guests arrived, they took their places in pairs, on couches, The banquet 
which were arranged around the room, each man reclining on 
his left arm. Slaves removed the sandals or shoes, wash¬ 
ing the dust from the feet, and passed bowls of water for the 
hands. They then brought in low three-legged tables, one 









122 


THE GREEKS —AGE OF PERICLES 


at the close, slaves once more passed bowls for washing the 
hands. When the eating was over, the real business of the 
evening began — with the wine. This was mixed with water, 
and drunkenness was not common; but the drinking lasted 
late, with serious or playful talk, and singing and story-telling. 



School Scenes. — A Bowl Painting. — Instruments of instruction, mostly 
musical, hang on the walls. In the first half, one instructor is correcting 
the exercise of a boy who stands before him. Another is showing how 
to use the flute. The seated figures, with staffs, are “pedagogues.” 


and with forfeits for those who did not perform well any part 
assigned them by the “ master of the feast” (one of their number 
chosen by the others when the wine appeared). Often the 
host had musicians come in, with jugglers and dancing 
girls. 

Respectable women never appeared on these occasions. 











EVERYDAY LIFE 


123 


Only on marriage festivals, or some special family celebration, 
did the women of a family meet male guests at all. 

Education at Athens was in marked contrast with Spartan Education 
education. It aimed to train harmoniously the intellect, the 
sense of beauty, the moral nature, and the body. At school, the 
boy was constantly under the eye not only of the teacher, but 
also of a trusted servant of his own family, called a pedagogue. 1 
The chief subjects for study were Homer and music. Homer, 
it has well been said, was to the Greek as Bible, Shakespeare, 
and Robinson Crusoe. The boy learned to write on papyrus 
with ink. But papyrus was costly, and the elementary exer¬ 
cises were carried on with a sharp instrument on tablets coated 
with wax. 

Physical training began with the child and continued through 
old age. No Greek youth would pass a day without devot¬ 
ing some hours to developing his body and to overcoming 
any physical defect or awkwardness that he might have. All 
classes of citizens, except those bound by necessity to the work¬ 
shop, met for exercise. The result was a perfection of physical 
power and beauty never attained so universally by any other 
people. 

Imaginative Exercises. — 1. A captive Persian’s letter to a friend 
after Plataea. 2. A dialogue between Socrates and Xanthippe. 

3. An address by a Messenian to his fellows in their revolt against 
Sparta. 4. Extracts from a diary of Pericles. 5. A day at the Olympic 
games (choose some particular date). 

Read Davis’ A Day in Old Athens and Nos. 76-80, 88-97, from his 
Readings. Two very valuable and readable little books upon the topics 
of the last two chapters are Grant’s Greece in the Age of Pericles and 
Abbott’s Pericles (especially the opening chapters). 

1 The word meant “boy-leader.” Its use for “teacher” is lateio 




An Athenian Warship {Trireme). 1 

CHAPTER XIII 

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR AND THE FALL OF HELLAS 


Sparta and 
Athens 


The Pelo¬ 
ponnesian 
War, 431 - 
404 B.C. 


Athens stood for progress ; Sparta hated change. The cities 
of the Athenian Empire were Ionian, democratic, and commer¬ 
cial ; most of the cities of the Peloponnesian League were Dorian, 
ruled by land-holding aristocracies. These differences gave 
rise to mutual distrust and dislike. Still, if none of the Pelopon¬ 
nesian cities had had interests on the sea, the two powers might 
not have crossed each other’s paths. But Corinth and Megara 
(allies of Sparta) were trading cities, and, with the growth of 
Athenian commerce, they feared ruin for themselves. So, in 
431 b.c. Corinth succeeded in persuading Sparta to declare 
war on Athens. The struggle lasted twenty-seven years and 
ruined the promise of Greece. 

The Peloponnesian League could muster a hundred thousand 
hoplites, against whom in that day no army in the world could 
stand; but it could not keep many men in the field longer than 
a few weeks. Athens had only some twenty-six thousand hop¬ 
lites at her command, and half of these were needed for distant 
garrison duty. But she had a navy even more unmatched on the 
sea than the Peloponnesian army was on land. Her walls were 
impregnable. The islands of Euboea and Salamis, and the open 
spaces within the Long Walls, she thought, could receive her 


1 From an Athenian relief. Only the highest “ bank ” of rowers is visible, 
but the oars of the two other banks are shown. (They projected through 
portholes, and the rowers were protected from arrows by the sides of the 
ship.) There were 174 oarsmen and about 20 other sailors to each ship, for 
helmsmen, lookouts, overseers of the oarsmen, and so on. And a warship 
never carried less than ten fully armed soldiers. The Athenians usually 
sent from 20 to 25 in each ship. The ships were about 120 feet long, and 
less than 20 feet wide. 


124 







WAR BETWEEN SPARTA AND ATHENS 125 


country people with their flocks and herds. Grain ships from 
the Black Sea coasts could enter the Piraeus as usual, however 
the Spartans might hold the open country of Attica. Athens 
could support her population for a time from her annual revenues 
and from the immense surplus of 6000 talents ($6,600,000) in 
her treasury. 

The Spartans marched each year into Attica with over¬ 
whelming force, and remained there for some weeks, laying waste 
the crops, burning the villages, and cutting down the olive 
groves, up to the very walls of Athens. At first, with frenzied 
rage, the Athenians clamored to march out against the invader; 
but Pericles strained his great authority to prevent such a 
disaster, and finally he convinced the people that they must 
bear this insult and ruin with patience. Meantime, an Athenian 
fleet was always sent to ravage the coasts and harbors of Pelo¬ 
ponnesus and to conquer various exposed allies of Sparta. 

Each party could inflict considerable damage, but neither could 
strike a vital blow. 

But a tragic disaster fell upon Athens, which no one in that The Plague 
day could have foreseen. A plague had been ravaging western m Athens 
Asia, and in the second year of the war it reached the Aegean. 

In Athens it was peculiarly deadly. The people of all Attica, 
crowded into the one city, were living under unusual and un¬ 
wholesome conditions; and the pestilence returned there each 
summer for several years. It slew more than a fourth of the popu¬ 
lation, paralyzed industry, and shattered the proud and joyous 
self-trust of the Athenian people. 

The causes of the pestilence are told by Thucydides: — “ When 
the country people of Attica arrived in Athens, a few had homes of 
their own, or found friends to take them in. But far the greater 
number had to find a place to live on some vacant spot or in the 
temples of the gods and chapels of the heroes. . . . Many also camped 
down in the towers of the walls, or wherever else they could; for 
the city proved too small to hold them.” And, adds Thucydides with 
grim irony, “While these country folk were dividing the spaces be¬ 
tween the Long Walls and settling there,” the Generals and Council 
were “paying great attention to mustering a fleet for ravaging the 
Peloponnesian coasts.” 



126 


THE GREEKS 


Death of 
Pericles 


Athenian 
disaster in 
Sicily 


Sparta 
betrays the 
Asiatic 
Greeks to 
Persia 


The deadliest blow of the plague was the striking down of 
Pericles in the third year of the war. Never had the Athenians 
so needed his calm and fearless judgment. He was succeeded 

by.a new class of leaders, 
— men of the people, like 
Cleon the tanner, — men 
of strong will and much 
force, but rude, untrained, 
and ready to surrender 
their own convictions in 
order to win the favor 
of the crowd. Such men 
led Athens into many 
blunders and crimes. 
Over against them stood 
only Alcibiades, a bril¬ 
liant, unprincipled ad¬ 
venturer, and a group of 
incapable aristocrats, led 
by Nicias, a good but 
stupid man. 

In 413 b.c., after a 
whole generation had 
grown up in war, the 
superstition and mismanagement of Nicias caused the loss 
(in an expedition against Syracuse) of two hundred perfectly 
equipped Athenian ships and over forty thousand men — among 
them eleven thousand of the flower of the Athenian hoplites. 
Even after this crushing disaster Athens refused peace that 
should take away her empire, and the war lasted nine years 
more — part of the time with Athens as supreme in the Aegean 
as ever. 

But in 412, immediately after the destruction of the Athenian 
army in Sicily, Persian satraps appeared again upon the Aegean 
coast. Sparta at once bought the aid of their gold by betraying 
the freedom of the Asiatic Greeks, — to whom the Athenian 
name had been a shield for seventy years. Persian funds then 



The Hermes of Praxiteles. — Praxit¬ 
eles rivaled his master, Phidias; and 
this statue, though so sadly mutilated, 
remains one of the most famous sur¬ 
viving masterpieces of Greek art. 




SPARTAN SUPREMACY, 404-371 B.C. 


127 


built fleet after fleet for Sparta; and slowly Athens was ex¬ 
hausted, despite some brilliant victories. In 405, her last fleet 
was surprised and captured at Aegospotami (Goat Rivers). 
Apparently the officers had been plotting for an oligarchic 
revolution; and the sailors had been discouraged and demoral¬ 
ized, even if they were not actually betrayed by their com¬ 
manders. Lysander, the Spartan commander, in cold blood 
put to death the four thousand Athenian citizens among the 
captives. 

This slaughter marks the end. Athens still held out, despair¬ 
ing but stubborn, until starved into submission by a terrible 
siege. Corinth and Thebes wished to raze it from the earth, 
but Sparta had no mind to do away with so useful a check upon 
those cities. She compelled Athens to renounce all claims to 
empire, to give up all alliances, to surrender all her ships but 
twelve. The Long Walls and the defenses of the Piraeus were 
demolished, to the music of Peloponnesian flutes; and Hellas 
was declared free! It remained only to see to what foreign master 
Greece should fall. 

From the Persian Wars to the fall of Athens there had been 
seventy-five glorious years. From the fall of Athens to the fall 
of Hellas there were about as many years more — mainly of 
shame and of profitless wars. 

For thirty-seven years, Sparta was supreme. Every¬ 
where she set up oligarchic governments. The cities of the 
old Athenian Empire found that they had exchanged a mild, 
wise rule for a coarse and stupid despotism. Their old 
tribute was doubled; their self-government was taken away; 
bloodshed and confusion ran riot in their streets. Usually the 
management of a city was given to an aristocratic board of 
ten men, called a decarchy (“rule of ten”), commonly with 
a Spartan garrison in the citadel to guard against demo¬ 
cratic risings. The garrisons plundered at will, and grew 
rich from extortion and bribes; and the decarchies were 
slavishly subservient to their Spartan masters, while they 
wreaked upon their fellow-citizens a long pent-up aristocratic 


Fall of 
Athens 


Spartan su¬ 
premacy, 

404-371 

B.C. 









128 


THE GREEKS 


Spartan 

decay 


The Thirty 
at Athens 



vengeance, in confiscation, outrage, expulsion, assassination, 
and massacre. 

In Sparta itself luxury and corruption replaced the old sim¬ 
plicity. Property was gathered into the hands of a few, while 
many Spartans grew too poor to support themselves in their 

barrack life. These 


poorer men ceased to 
be looked upon as 
citizens. They were 
not permitted to vote 
in the Assembly, and 
were known as “In¬ 
feriors.” The 10,000 
citizens, of the Per¬ 
sian War period, 
shrank to 2000. 

For a time even 
Athens remained a 
victim to Spartan tyr¬ 
anny, like any petty 
Ionian city. During 
the war, the old oli¬ 
garchic party, so long 
helpless, had organ- 

Copy of a. Satyr by Praxiteles. — This is secre t clubs 

Hawthorne’s “Marble Faun.” to conspire against 

the democratic gov¬ 
ernment. After the surrender, in 404, Lysander appointed a 
committee of thirty from these clubs to undo the reforms of 
Pericles and Clisthenes and Solon, and “to reestablish the 
constitution of the fathers.” These men (a triple decarchy) 
were known as “the Thirty Tyrants.” They called in a 
Spartan garrison, to whom they gave the fortress of the Acrop¬ 
olis ; they disarmed the citizens and began a bloody and greedy 
reign of terror. Rich democrats and alien merchants were put 
to death or driven into exile, in order that their property 
might be confiscated. (Davis’ Readings, I, No. 100.) 





SPARTAN SUPREMACY, 404-371 B.C. 


129 


Despite the orders of Sparta, such exiles and other democratic 
fugitives were sheltered by Thebes. That city felt aggrieved 
that her services in the Peloponnesian War had received no 
reward from Sparta, and now she would have been glad to see 
Atheps more powerful again. A year later, a daring band of 
these Athenian exiles marched secretly from Thebes by night 
and seized the Piraeus. The aliens of the harbor rose in their 



Present State of Theater of Apollo at Delphi. — Compare wita cuts 
facing p. 109. This view is taken from the ruins of the Temple. 


support, and they defeated the Spartan garrison and the forces 
of the Thirty. The restored democracy showed itself generous 
as well as moderate. A few of the most guilty of the Thirty 
were punished, but for all others a general amnesty was declared. 
This moderation contrasted so favorably with the cut-throat 
rule of the recent Athenian experiments at oligarchy, that 
Athens was undisturbed in future by revolution. 

Meantime, important events were taking place in the East. 
In 401, the weakness of the Persian Empire was shown strik¬ 
ingly. Cyrus the Younger, brother of the king Artaxerxes, en- 


March of 
the Ten 
Thousand 





130 


THE GREEKS 


New 

Persian 

wars 


Theban 

revolution 


deavored to seize the Persian throne. While a satrap in Asia 
Minor, Cyrus had furnished Sparta the money to keep her fleet 
together befqre the battle of Goat Rivers; and now, through 
Sparta’s favor, he was able to enlist ten thousand Greeks in 
his army. 

Cyrus penetrated to the heart of the Persian Empire; but in 
a great battle near Babylon, he was killed, and his Asiatic troops 
routed. The Ten Thousand Greeks, however, proved unconquer¬ 
able by the Persian half million. By treachery the Greek 
commanders were entrapped and murdered; but, under the 
leadership of Xenophon (pp. 33, 110), the Ten Thousand made 
a remarkable retreat to the Black Sea. 

Until this time the Greeks had waged their contests with 
Persia only along the coasts of Asia. After the Ten Thousand had 
marched, almost at will, through so many hostile nations, the 
Greeks began to dream of conquering the Asiatic continent. Indeed, 
in 396, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, invaded Asia Minor with a 
large army; but, in full career of conquest, was called back 
by revolts in Greece. 

Sparta had used her power, with brutal cunning, to keep 
down the beginnings of greatness everywhere else in Hellas, 
breaking up promising leagues and even dispersing the inhabit¬ 
ants of Mantinea (leading city of neighboring Arcadia) into 
villages. Naturally, alliance after alliance rose against bev — 
until finally she was overthrown by her old ally, Thebes — 
whose citadel had been seized treacherously in time of peace, 
by a Spartan army. 

That garrison set up a Theban government of oligarchs, 
which drove crowds of patriotic citizens into exile. Athens 
sheltered these exiles, as Thebes had protected Athenian fugi¬ 
tives from the Thirty Tyrants. Then a number of daring 
young men among the exiles returned secretly to Thebes, and, 
through the aid of friends there, were admitted (disguised as 
dancing girls) to a banquet where the Theban oligarchs were 
already deep in wine. They killed the drunken traitors with 
their daggers. Then, running through the streets, they called, 
the people to expel the Spartans from the citadel. Thebes 




THEBAN LEADERSHIP —EPAMINONDAS 131 


became a democracy under the lead of Epaminondas, who now 
stood to Thebes somewhat as Pericles had done to Athens. 

A powerful Spartan army at once invaded Boeotia (in 371 Battle of 
B.c.) and met with an overwhelming defeat by a smaller Theban Leuctra 
force at Leuctra. This amazing result was due to the military 
genius of Epaminondas. Hitherto the Greeks had fought in 
long lines, from eight to twelve men deep. Epaminondas 
massed his best troops in a solid column, fifty men deep, on the 
left, opposite the Spartan wing in the Peloponnesian army. 

His other troops were 
spread out as thin as pos¬ 
sible. The solid phalanx 
was set in motion first; 
then the thinner center 
and right wing advanced 
more slowly so as to en¬ 
gage the attention of the 
enemy opposite, but not 
to come into action. The 
weight of the massed 
Theban charge crushed 
through the Spartan line, and trampled it under. Four hun¬ 
dred of the seven hundred Spartans, with their king and with 
a thousand other Peloponnesian hoplites, went down in ten 
minutes. 

The mere loss of men was fatal enough, now that Spartan Fall of 
citizenship was so reduced (the number of full citizens after sparta 
this battle did not exceed fifteen hundred); but the effect upon 
the military prestige of Sparta was even more deadly. At one 
stroke Sparta sank into a second-rate power; but she met her 
fate with heroic composure. The news of the overthrow did 
not interfere with a festival that was going on in Sparta, and 
only the relatives of the survivors of the battle appeared in 
mourning. 

For a brief time after Leuctra, Thebes was the head of Greece. 
Epaminondas was great as general, statesman, and philosopher. 

In his earlier days he had been looked upon as a dreamer; and 










132 


THE GREEKS 


Theban 

supremacy 

under 

Epaminon- 

das 


Fall 

of Thebes 


The 

Macedonian 

conquest 


Philip II 


when the oligarchs of Thebes drove out “active” patriots they 
only sneered while Epaminondas continued calmly to talk of 
liberty to the young. Later, it was recognized that, more than 
any other man, he had prepared the way for a free democracy. 

Unhappily, the few years remaining of his life Epaminondas 
was compelled to give mainly to war. Laconia was repeatedly 
invaded. During these campaigns, on one side of Sparta, 
Epaminondas freed Messenia — which for two centuries had 
been a mere district of Laconia — and on the other side, or¬ 
ganized Arcadia into a federal union, so as to “ surround Sparta 
with a perpetual blockade.” The great Theban aided the Mes- 
senians to found a new capital, Messene, and in Arcadia he 
restored Mantinea. In this district he also founded Megalopo¬ 
lis, “the Great City,” by combining forty scattered villages. 

The leadership of Thebes, however, rested solely on the 
supreme genius of her one statesman. In 362, for the fourth 
time, Epaminondas marched against Sparta, and at Mantinea 
won another complete victory. The Spartans had been unable 
to learn; and went down again before the same tactics that had 
crushed them nine years earlier at Leuctra. Mantinea was the 
greatest land battle ever fought between Hellenes; but the 
victory bore no fruit, for Epaminondas fell on the field, and 
his city sank at once to a slow and narrow policy. 

The failure of the Greek cities to unite into larger states 
made it certain that sooner or later they must fall to some 
outside power. Sparta and Thebes (with Persian aid) had 
been able to prevent Athenian leadership; Thebes and Athens 
had overthrown Sparta; Sparta and Athens had been able to 
check Thebes. Twenty years of anarchy followed; and then 
Greece fell to a foreign master. 

Until some years after Leuctra, the Macedonians (part of 
the outer rim of the Greek race) had been only a loose union of 
barbarous tribes. Then Philip II (ambitious, crafty, sagacious, 
persistent, unscrupulous, an unfailing judge of character, and a 
marvelous organizer) made his people a nation, and set himself 
to make them true Greeks by making them the leaders of Greece. 



CONQUEST BY MACEDONIA 


133 


At his accession Macedon was a poor country without a good 
harbor. The first need was an outlet on the sea. Philip 
found one by conquering the Chalcidic peninsula — whose 
gold mines furnished him a huge revenue. Soon he turned his 
energies to Greece. In all Greek states, among the pretended 



patriots, there were secret servants in his pay, while even some 
farsighted leaders (like Isocrates at Athens) seem to have 
believed honestly that the hope of Greece lay in union under 
Macedon. 

Philip’s wealth made it possible for him to keep a disciplined 
army ready for use. This army was as superior to the two- 
months citizen armies of Hellas as his secret and persistent 
“diplomacy” was more cunning and effective than the changing 


The 

phalanx 














134 


THE GREEKS 


Demos¬ 
thenes and 
his 

Philippics 


Philip’s 
conquest of 
Greece 


counsels and open plans of a public assembly. During a stay 
at Thebes while a boy, Philip had become familiar with the 
Theban phalanx. He now enlarged and improved it, so that the 

ranks presented five rows 
of bristling spears project¬ 
ing beyond the front rank 
of soldiers. The flanks 
were protected by light¬ 
armed troops, and the 
Macedonian nobles fur¬ 
nished the finest of cav¬ 
alry. At the same time a 
field “artillery” first ap¬ 
pears, made up of curious 
engines able to throw darts 
and great stones three hun¬ 
dred yards. Such a mix¬ 
ture of trained troops , on a 
permanent footing , was altogether novel. Philip created the 
instrument with which his son was to conquer the world. 

The only man who constantly opposed Philip (although in 
vain) was Demosthenes the Athenian. Demosthenes was the 
greatest orator of Greece. To check Macedonia became the 
one aim of his life; and the last glow of Greek independence 
flames up in his passionate appeals to Athens that she defend 
Hellas against Macedon as she had once done against Persia. 
“ Suppose,” he cried in one of his noble “ Philippics,” “ that 
you have one of the gods, as surety that Philip will leave you 
untouched, in the name of all the gods, it is a shame for you in 
ignorant stupidity to sacrifice the rest of Hellas ! ” 

In 338 b.c., Philip threw off the mask, invaded Greece, and 
crushed the combined Athenians and Thebans at Chaeronea. 
Then a congress of Greek states at Corinth recognized Macedonia 
as the head of Greece. The separate states were to keep their 
local self-government, but foreign matters, including war and 
peace, were committed to Philip. Philip was also declared 
general in chief of the armies of Greece for a war against Persia. 



Philip II of Macedon. — A gold me¬ 
dallion by Alexander. 






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Cf? S f'^rr 7*— 

4_w*^y/ 

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PART m -THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 

The seed-ground of European civilization is neither Greece nor the 
Orient, hut a world joined of the two. — Benjamin Ide Wheeler. 


CHAPTER XIV 

ALEXANDER JOINS EAST AND WEST 

Two years after Chaeronea, Philip of Macedo'n was assas¬ 
sinated. He was just ready to begin the invasion of Asia; 
and the work was taken up by his son Alexander. As a boy, 
Alexander had been fearless and self-willed, with fervent affec¬ 
tions. He was devoted to Homer, and he knew the Iliad by 
heart. Homer’s Achilles he claimed for an ancestor and took 
for his ideal. His education was directed by Aristotle (p. 143), 
and from this great teacher he learned to admire Greek culture. 

At his father’s death Alexander was a stripling of twenty years. 
He was to prove a rare military genius. He never refused an 
engagement and never lost a battle, and he could be shrewd and 
adroit in diplomacy; but at this time he was known only as 
a rash boy. Revolt broke out everywhere; but the young king 
showed himself at once both statesman and general. With 
marvelous rapidity he struck crushing blows on this side and on 
that. For a second revolt Thebes was sacked and leveled with 
the ground, except the house of Pindar (p. 73), and the miser¬ 
able thirty thousand survivors were sold as slaves. 

Then, with his authority firmly reestablished, Alexander 
turned to attack Persia. In 334 b.c., he crossed the Hellespont 
with 35,000 troops, an army quite enough to scatter any Oriental 
force, and as large as any general could handle well in that day 
on long marches in a hostile country. The route of march can 
best be traced on the map opposite. The conquest of the 

135 


Alexander 
“ the 
Great,” 
336 B.C. 


Order 

restored 


Conquest 
of the 
Persian 
Empire 







136 


THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 


Asia Minor: 
the 

Granicus 


Syria: 

Issus 


Interior of 

Asia: 

Arbela 


Campaigns 
in the East 


empire took five years, and the story falls into three parts, each 
marked by a famous battle. 

1. The Persian satraps of Asia Minor met the invaders at 
the Granicus , a small stream in ancient Troyland. Alexander 
himself led the Macedonian charge through the river and up 
the steep bank into the midst of the Persian cavalry, where he 
barely escaped death. The victory made him master of all 
Asia Minor. 

2. To strike at the heart of the empire at once would have 
been to leave behind him a large Persian fleet, to encourage 
revolt in Greece. Alexander wisely determined to secure the 
entire coast , and so make safe his “line of communication.” 
Accordingly he turned south, to reduce Phoenicia and Egypt. 
Meantime the Persians had gathered a great army; but in a 
narrow defile at Issus Alexander easily overthrew their host of 
six hundred thousand men led by King Darius in person. He 
now assumed the title, King of Persia. The siege of Tyre 
(p. 47) detained him a year; but Egypt welcomed him as a 
deliverer. While in that country he founded Alexandria at 
the mouth of the Nile — a city destined to be for many centuries 
a commercial and intellectual center for the world, where before 
there had been only a haunt of pirates. 

3. Darius now proposed that he and Alexander should share 
the empire between them, with the Euphrates for the dividing 
line. Rejecting this offer contemptuously, Alexander took up 
his march for the interior. Following the ancient route from 
Egypt to Assyria, he met Darius near Arbela, not far from 
ancient Nineveh. The Persians are said to have numbered a 
million men. Alexander purposely allowed them choice of time 
and place, and by a third decisive victory proved the hopelessness 
of their resistance. Darius never gathered another army. The 
capitals of the empire — Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis 
— surrendered, with enormous treasure in gold and silver, and 
the Persian Empire had fallen (331 b.c.). 

The next six years went to more desperate warfare in the 
eastern mountain regions, and in India. Alexander carried 
his arms as far east from Babylon as Babylon was from Mace- 


FUSION OF EAST AND WEST 


137 


donia. He traversed great deserts; subdued the warlike and 
princely chiefs of Bactria and Sogdiana up to the steppes of 
the wild Tartar tribes beyond the Oxus ; twice forced the passes 
of the Hindukush; conquered the valiant mountaineers of 
what is now Afghanistan; and led his army into the fertile 
and populous plains of northern India. He crossed the Indus, 
won realms beyond the ancient Persian province of the Punjab, 
and planned still more distant empires ; but on the banks of the 
Hyphasis River his faithful Macedonians refused to be led 
farther, to waste away in inhuman perils; and the chagrined 
conqueror was compelled to return to Babylon. This city he 
made his capital, and here he died of a drunken fever two years 
later (323 b.c.) at the age of thirty-two. 

Alexander began his conquest to avenge the West upon the 
East. But he came to see excellent and noble qualities in 
Oriental life, and he rose to a broader view. He aimed to fuse 
the East and the West into a new civilization. Persian youths 
were trained by. thousands in Macedonian fashion to replace 
the veterans of Alexander’s army; Persian nobles were wel¬ 
comed at court and given high offices; and the government of 
Asia was intrusted largely to Asiatics, on a system similar to 
that of Darius the Great. Alexander himself adopted Persian 
manners and customs, and he bribed and coaxed and forced his 
officers and soldiers to do the like. 

At the same time Alexander saw that to fulfill this mission he 
must open the East to Greek ideas. The races might mingle 
their blood; the Greek might learn much from the Orient, and 
in the end be absorbed by it; but the thought and art of little 
Hellas , with its active energy , must leaven the vast passive mass of 
the East. 

One great measure, for this end, was the founding of chains 
of cities, to bind the conquests together and to become the 
homes of Hellenic influence. Alexander himself built seventy 
of these towns. Their walls sprang up under the pick and spade 
of the soldiery along the lines of march. One great city, we 
are told, walls and houses, was completed in twenty days. 


Merging of 
East and 
West 


Hellenism 
the leaven 
for the mass 


The many 
Alexandrias 



Greek col¬ 
onies in the 
Orient 


Cities in the 
age of 
Alexander 


138 THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 

Sometimes these places were mere garrison towns on distant 
frontiers, but oftener they became mighty emporiums at the 
intersection of great lines of trade. There was an Alexandria 
on the Jaxartes, on the Indus, on the Euphrates, as well as on 
the Nile. Many of these cities remain great capitals to this 
day, like Herat and Kandahar. (Iskandar, or Kandahar, is an 
Oriental form of the Greek name Alexander.) 

This building of Greek cities was continued by Alexander’s 
successors. Once more, and on a vaster scale than ever before, 
the Greek genius for colonization found vent. Each new city 
had a Greek nucleus. At first this consisted mainly of worn-out 



Alexander. Alexander in a Lion-hunt. 


The two sides of a gold medallion struck by Alexander at Tarsus. 

veterans, left behind as a garrison; but adventurous youth, 
emigrating from old Hellas to win fortune, continued to rein¬ 
force the Greek element. The native village people roundabout 
were gathered in to make the bulk of the inhabitants; and these 
also soon became “Hellenized.” 

These cities were well paved. They had ample provision for 
lighting by night, a good water supply, and police protection. 
They met in their own assemblies, managed their own courts, 
and collected their own taxes. For centuries they made the 
backbone of Hellenism throughout the world. Greek was the 
ordinary speech of their streets; Greek architecture built their 
temples, and Greek sculpture adorned them; they celebrated 


A NEW CIVILIZATION 


139 


Greek games and festivals. No longer in little Hellas alone, 
but over the whole East, in Greek theaters, vast audiences 
were educated by the plays of Euripides. The culture developed 
by a small people became the heritage of 9, vast Graeco-Oriental 
world. 

Wealth was enormously augmented in the West. The vast Wealth 
treasure of gold and silver which Oriental monarchs had hoarded au s mented 
in secret vaults was thrown again into circulation, and large sums 
were brought back to Europe by returning adventurers, along 
with a new taste for Oriental luxuries. Manifold new comforts 
and enjoyments adorned and enriched life. 

A new era of scientific progress began. Alexander himself had Science 
the zeal of an explorer. When he first touched the Indus, he advanced 
thought it the upper course of the Nile; but he built a great 
fleet of two thousand vessels, sailed down the river to the Indian 
Ocean, and then sent his friend Nearchus to explore that sea 
and to trace the coast to the mouth of the Euphrates. After a 
voyage of many months, Nearchus reached Babylon. He had 
mapped the coast line, made frequent landings, and collected a 
mass of observations and a multitude of strange plants and 
animals. At other times, scientific collections were made by 
Alexander, to be sent to his old instructor Aristotle, who em¬ 
bodied the results of his study upon them in a Natural History 
of fifty volumes. (At one time, it is said, a thousand men were 
engaged in making such collections.) 

Thus Alexander’s victories enlarged the map of the world 
once more, and made these vaster spaces the home of a higher 
culture. They grafted the new West upon the old East, — a 
graft from which sprang the plant of our later civilization. 

For Further Reading. — Davis’ Readings , I, Nos. 108-118, and 
Wheeler’s Alexander the Great. 






Public Buildings of Pergamos, a Greek city of Asia, as “restored” by 
Thiersch. The city lay lower down, upon the plain. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE HELLENISTIC WORLD, 323-150 B.C. 


Wars of the 
Succession, 
323-280 
B.C. 


The third 

century 

B.C. 


Likeness to 

modern 

Europe 


Alexander left no heir old enough to succeed him. On his 
deathbed, asked to whom he would leave his throne, he replied 
grimly, “ To the strongest” ; and for a half century, as he foresaw, 
the history of the civilized world was a horrible welter of war 
and assassination. 

About 280 B.C., something like a fixed order emerged. Then 
followed a period of sixty years, known as the Glory of Hellenism. 
The Hellenistic 1 world reached from the Adriatic to the Indus, 
and consisted of: (1) three great kingdoms, Syria, Egypt, and 
Macedonia; (2) a broken chain of smaller monarchies scattered 
from Media to Epirus (some of them, like Pontus and Armenia, 
under dynasties descended from Persian princes); and (3) 
many single free cities like Byzantium and Rhodes. 

In many ways all the vast district bore a striking resemblance 
to modern Europe. There was a like division into great and small 
states, ruled by dynasties related by intermarriages; there 
was a common civilization, and a recognition of common interests 
as against outside barbarism; and there were shifting alliances. 


1 Hellenic refers to the old Hellas; Hellenistic , to the wider world, of 
mixed Hellenic and Oriental character, after Alexander. 

140 



THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE 


141 


and many greedy wars to preserve “the balance of power” or 
to secure trade advantages. There was a likeness to modern 
society, too, in the refinement of the age, in its excellences and 
its vices, the great learning, the increase in skill and in criti¬ 
cism, and, toward the close, in socialistic agitation among hungry 
sullen mobs against the 
ostentatious and waste¬ 
ful wealth that jostled 
them in the cities. 

One event was of gen¬ 
eral interest, the great 
Gallic invasion of 278 
b.c. This was the first 
formidable barbarian at¬ 
tack upon the Eastern 
world since the Scythians 
had been chastised by 
the early Persian kings. 

A century before, hordes 
of these same Gauls 
had devastated northern 
Italy and sacked the 
rising city of Rome. Now 
they poured into ex¬ 
hausted Macedonia, pen- The Apollo Belvedere, — representing the 
~ god defending his temple at Delphi with 

etrated into Greece as tar his thunderbolt from a raid of Gauls. The 

as Delphi, and carried Statue commemorates a raid which in some 
.. ’ . . way was repulsed in disorder. 

havoc even into Asia. 

For a long period every great sovereign of the Hellenic world 
turned his arms upon them, until they were finally settled 
as peaceful colonists in a region of Asia Minor, which took from 
them the name Galatia. 

Immediately upon Alexander’s death, one of his generals, 
Ptolemy, chose Egypt for his province. His descendants, all 
known as Ptolemies, ruled the land until the Roman conquest. 
Ptolemy I built the first lighthouse to protect the growing 
commerce of Alexandria. Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) restored 



Invasion 
by the 
Gauls 


Egypt 







142 


THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 


The 

Alexandrian 

Age 


Literature 


the old canal from the Red Sea to the Nile, constructed other 
roads, and fostered learning more than any of the world rulers 
before him. 


About 220 b.c. there began a general 'political decline in the 
Hellenistic world. The thrones of Syria, Egypt, and Mace¬ 
donia all fell to boys who showed a degeneracy ommon in 

Oriental ruling fami¬ 
lies after a few great 
generations. But the 
splendor of Hellenis¬ 
tic civilization grew 
brighter for a half 
century longer. The 
whole period from 280 
to 150 b.c. is often 
known as “the Alex¬ 
andrian Age” — from 
the Egyptian capital 
which led the other 
centers of culture. 

This many-sided age 
produced new forms 
in art and literature: 



Alexandrian Lighthouse (Tower of Pharos ), 
as “restored” by Adler. The tower rose 325 
feet (thirty stories) into the air, and from the 
summit a group of polished reflecting mirrors 
threw its light at night far out to sea. It 
seemed to the Jewish citizens of Alexandria 
to make real once more the old Hebrew story 
of the Pillar of Cloud by day and of Fire by 
night, — to guide wanderers on the wastes of 
waves. “All night,” said a Greek poet, “will 
the sailor, driving before the storm, see the 


fire gleam from its top.” This structure especially (1) the prose 
stood for more than 16 centuries. r z 

romance , a story of 

love, and adventure, the forerunner of the modern novel; 
(2) the pastoral poetry of Theocritus, which was to influence 
Virgil and Tennyson; and (3) personal memoirs. Treatises on 
literary criticism abounded; the science of grammar was devel¬ 
oped ; and poets prided themselves upon writing all kinds of 
verse equally well. Intellectually, in its faults, as in its virtues, 
the time strikingly resembles our own. 1 


1 This period saw also the most important attempt at a federal government 
that the world was to know until the founding of the United States of 
America. For many years the Achaean League seemed about to revive the 
ancient glory of old Hellas; but this promise was ruined by a selfish war 
with a reformed and “ socialistic ” Sparta, and Macedonian rule was again 
established. 







PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 


143 



Painting 

and 

sculpture 


Painting was carried to great perfection. According to 
popular stories, Zeuxis painted a cluster of grapes so that birds 
pecked at them, while Apelles painted a horse so that real 
horses neighed at the sight. Greek sculpture, too, produced 
some of its greatest work in this period. Among the famous 
pieces that survive are the Dying Gaul, the Apollo Belvedere 
(p. 141), the Venus of Milo (Melos), and the Laocoon group. 

After Socrates, Greek philosophy had three periods. ( For Philosophy 
the Spartan and Theban period.) The most famous disciple 
of Socrates is known 
best by his nick¬ 
name Plato (“ broad- 
browed”). His name, 
and that of his pupil 
and rival, Aristotle, of 
the next period, are 
among the greatest in 
the history of ancient 
thought, — among the 
very greatest, indeed, 
in all time. Plato 
taught that things are 
merely the shadows of 
ideas and that ideas 
alone are real. This 

statement gives a very Venus ( Aphrodite) OF Melos. — This beautiful 
. „ . „ statue is now in the Louvre, 

imperfect picture ol 

his beautiful and mystical philosophy — which is altogether 
too complex to treat here. It is more important to know that, 
for the first time in history, Plato planned an ideal state (his 
Republic), — so prophesying a time when men shall build the 
world intelligently. 

(For the Macedonian period.) Aristotle, in sharp contrast with 
Plato, cared about things. Besides his philosophical treatises, 
he wrote upon rhetoric, logic, poetry, politics, physics and 
chemistry, and natural history; and he built up all the knowl¬ 
edge gathered by the ancient world into one complete system. 










144 THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 


The Epicu¬ 
reans 


The Stoics 


For the intellectual world of his day he worked a task not 
unlike that of his pupil Alexander in the political world. More 
than any other of the ancients, too, he was many-sided and 
modern in his way of thinking. 

(For the period after Alexander.) During the Wars of the Suc¬ 
cession, two new philosophical systems were born, — Epicurean¬ 
ism, and Stoicism. Each called itself highly “practical.” 
Neither asked, as older philosophies had done, “ What is true ? ” 
Stoicism asked (in a sense following Socrates), “ What is right ? ” 
and Epicureanism asked merely, “ What is expedient ? ” One 
sought virtue; the other, happiness. Neither sought knowl¬ 
edge. 

1. Epicurus was an Athenian citizen. He taught that every 
man must pursue happiness as an end, but that the highest 
pleasure was to be obtained by a wise choice of the refined 
pleasures of the mind and of friendship, — not by gratifying 
the lower appetites. He advised temperance and virtue as 
means to happiness; and he himself lived a frugal life, saying 
that with a crust of bread and a cup of cold water he could 
rival Zeus in happiness. Under cover of his theories, however, 
some of his followers taught and practiced gross living. 

The Epicureans denied the supernatural, and held death 
to be the end of all things. Epicureanism produced some 
lovable characters, but no exalted ones. 

2 . Zeno the Stoic also taught at Athens, in the painted porch 
(stoa) on the north side of the market place. His followers 
made virtue, not happiness, the end of life. If happiness were 
to come at all, it would come, they said, as a result, not as an 
end. They placed emphasis upon the dignity of human nature : 
the wise man should be superior to the accidents of fortune. 

The Stoics believed in the gods as manifestations of one 
Divine Providence that ordered all things well. The noblest 
characters of the Greek and Roman world from this time be¬ 
longed to this sect. Stoicism was inclined, however, to ignore 
the gentler and kindlier side of human life; and with bitter 
natures it merged into the philosophy of the Cynics, of whom 
Diogenes, with his tub and lantern, is the great example. Both 



SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS 145 

Stoics and Epicureans held to a wide brotherhood of man,— 
one result of the union of the world in the new Graeco-Oriental 
culture. 

The closing age of Hellenistic history saw the forerunner of 
the modern university. The beginning was made at Athens. 
Plato, by his will, left his gardens and other property to his 
followers, organized in a club. Athenian law did not recognize 
the right of any group of people to hold property, unless it were 
a religious body. Therefore this club claimed to be organized 
for the worship of the Muses, who were the patrons of literature 
and learning; and the name Museum was given to the institu¬ 
tion. This was the first endowed academy, and the first union of 
teachers and learners into a corporation} 

The idea has never since died out of the world. The model 
and name were used a little later by the Ptolemies at Alexan¬ 
dria in their “ Museum.” This was a richly endowed institution, 
with many students. It had a great library of over half a 
million volumes (manuscripts), with scribes to make careful 
copies and explain the meaning of doubtful passages by notes. 
Every important city in the Hellenic world wished its library 
to have an “Alexandrian edition” of each famous book, as 
the standard work upon which to base copies. (It is upon such 
copies that our modern printed editions of Greek books are 
mainly based.) One enterprise, of incalculable benefit to the 
later world, shows the zeal of the Ptolemies in collecting and 
translating texts. Alexandria had many Jews in its population, 
but they were coming to use the Greek language. Ptolemy 
Philadelphus had the Hebrew Scriptures translated into Greek 
for their benefit. This is the famous Septuagint translation, so 
called from the tradition that it was the work of seventy scholars. 

The Alexandrian Museum had also observatories and bo¬ 
tanical and zoological gardens, with collections of rare plants 
and animals from distant parts of the world; and the libra¬ 
rians and other scholars who were gathered about the institu¬ 
tion corresponded to the faculty of a modern university. 

1 A corporation is a body of men recognized by the law as a “ person” so 
far as property rights go. 


Libraries 

and 

museums; 
“ univer¬ 
sities” 





146 


THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 


Science 


Science made greater strides than ever before in an equal 
length of time. Medicine, surgery, botany, and mechanics 
began to be real sciences. Archimedes of Syracuse discovered 
the principles of the lever and of specific gravity, as our high 
school students learn them in physics, and constructed burning 
mirrors and new hurling engines which made effective siege 
artillery. Euclid, 'a Greek at Alexandria, building upon the 
old Egyptian knowledge, produced the geometry which is still 
taught in our schools with little addition. Eratosthenes (born 


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CTke Latin names 
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ACCORDING TO ERATOSTHENES 

are taken from Strabo, two centuries later, 
closely followed Eratosthenes.) 




276 b.c.), a librarian at Alexandria, wrote a systematic work 
on geography, invented delicate astronomical instruments, 
and devised the present way of measuring the circumference 
of the earth — with results nearly correct. His maps were 
the first to use meridians and parallels to show latitude and longi¬ 
tude. A little later, Aristarchus taught that the earth moved 
round the sun; and Hipparchus calculated eclipses, catalogued 
the stars, wrote books on astronomy, and founded the science 
of trigonometry. Aristotle had already given all the proofs of 
the sphericity of the earth that are common in our textbooks 
now (except that of actual circumnavigation) and had asserted 
that men could probably reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. 




























OUR HERITAGE FROM THE GREEKS 


147 


The scientific spirit gave rise, too, to actual voyages of explora¬ 
tion into many regions. Daring discoverers brought back from 
northern regions wild tales of icebergs gleaming in the cold aurora 
of the polar skies, and, from southern voyages, stories of hairy 
men (“gorillas”) in vine-tangled tropical forests. 

The Greek contributions to our civilization we cannot name our debt 
and count, as we did those from the preceding Oriental peoples. t0 Hellas 
Egypt and Babylon gave us outer features, — garments, if we 
choose so to speak, for the body of our civilization. But the 
Greeks gave us its soul. Sa}d a great historian, “ There is nothing 
that moves in the world to-day that is not Greek in origin.” 1 
Because the Greek contributions are of the spirit rather than 
of the body, they are hard to describe in a brief summary. One 
supreme thing, however, must be mentioned. The Greeks gave 
us the ideal of freedom, regulated by self-control, — freedom in 
thought, in religion, and in politics. 

Refebences fob Fubtheb Study. — Specially suggested : Davis’ 

Readings, I, Nos. 119-125 (19 pages, mostly from Polybius, Arrian, and 
Plutarch, the three Greek historians of that age). 

Additional: Plutarch’s Lives (“Aratus,” “Agis,” “Cleomenes,” 
“Philopoemen”); Mahaffy’s Alexander’s Empire. 


Fact Dbills on Gbeek Histoby 


1. The class should form a Table of Dates gradually as the critical 
points are reached, and should then drill upon it until it says itself as the 
alphabet does. The following dates are enough for this drill in Greek 
history. The table should be filled out as is done for the first two dates. 


776 b.c. First recorded Olympiad 
490 “ Marathon 

405 “ 


371 b.c. 
338 “ 
220 “ 


2. Explain concisely the following terms or names: Olympiads, 
Mycenaean Culture, Olympian Religion, Sappho. ( Let the class extend 
the list several fold.) 


1 See also theme sentences on page 5; 







PART IV -ROME 


Map Study 


Geograph¬ 
ical in¬ 
fluence 


The center of our studies, the goal of our thoughts, the point to which 
all paths lead and the point from which all paths start again, is to be found 
in Rome and her abiding power. — Freeman. 


CHAPTER XVI 
LAND AND PEOPLE 

Liguria, Gallia Cisalpina, and Venetia are outside ancient “ Italy ” 
— which included only the Apennine peninsula, not the Po valley. Fix 
the position of Etruria, Latium, Campania, Samnium, and the Sabines. 
Observe that the Arnus (Arno), in Etruria, the Tiber, between Etruria 
and Latium, and the Liris, between Latium and Campania, are the 
most important rivers. Their basins were homes of early culture in 
Italy. 

About 200 b.c. the historical “center of gravity” shifted west¬ 
ward once more to Italy, which till then had been merely an out¬ 
lying fragment of the civilized world. European culture began 
in the peninsula nearest to the older civilizations of the East. 
Just as naturally, the state which was to unite and rule all the coasts 
of the Mediterranean had its home in the central peninsula which 
divides that inland sea. 

Italy and Greece stood back to back. Italy faced, not 
the old East, but the new West. The mountains are nearer the 
eastern coast than the western: so, on the eastern side the 
short rocky spurs and swift torrents lose themselves quickly 
in the Adriatic. The western slope is nearly twice as broad: 
here are rivers and fertile plains, and, as a result, most of the 
few harbors and the important states. When Italy was ready 
for outside work, she gave herself first to conquering and civiliz¬ 
ing the lands of the western Mediterranean. 

148 










































































































✓ 













































THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 


149 


In prehistoric times, the fame of Italy’s rich plains and 
sunny, vine-covered slopes had tempted swarm after swarm of 
barbarians across the Alps and the Adriatic; and already 
at the opening of history the land held a curious mixture of 
races, — savage Gauls in the Po valley; mysterious Etruscans 
just north of the Tiber; Greeks in the south; and in the center 
the Italians. The eastern Italians were highlanders (Sabines, 
Samnites, Volscians); the 
western, lowland Italians 
were called Latins, and 
one of their cities was 
Rome. 

The Etruscans came in 
from western Asia long be¬ 
fore the Greeks began to 
settle in Italy. They were 
mighty builders, and have 
left many inscriptions in a 
language to which scholars 
can find no key. Their early 
tombs contain articles of 
Egyptian, Phoenician, and 
early Greek workmanship, 
brought there by traders 
who doubtless taught them 
many arts. In turn, the 
Etruscans were Rome’s first 
teachers. 

The Romans had no Homer. 1 Their early history, as it 
was first put together by their historians about 200 b.c., was 
a mass of curious legends, without much value except for the 
place they hold in poem and story. But in recent years excava¬ 
tions have taught us many facts about early Rome. 

The Latins called their district Latium. This territory was 
about the size of an ordinary American county. It was broken 
here and there by scattered hills; and on some one of these 

1 Some modern scholars, however, believe that there must have been a 
copious ballad literature among the people, from which early historians 
could draw- Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome was an attempt to reproduce 
such ballads as Macaulay thought must once have existed. 



Etruscan Vase, — red figures on a black 
ground. There is a strong resemblance 
to ancient Cretan work; and for other 
reasons some scholars suspect a close 
connection between Cretans and Etrus¬ 
cans. 


Races 


Old legends 
about early 
Rome 


The early 
Latins 









150 


EARLY ROME 


Trade with 
Etruscans 


The square 
Palatine 
town: the 
nucleus of 
Rome 


each Latin tribe had its citadel. Once a year all Latins gathered 
at one of these hill forts, Mount Alba , for a festival in honor 
of the chief Latin god, Jupiter; and the straggling village 
Alba Longa (the Long White town) was the recognized leader of 

the Latin tribes in war against 
the robber bands of Sabines 
from the mountains and against 
the powerful Etruscans across the 
Tiber. 

In many ways, however, the 
Etruscans had become necessary to 
Latin comfort. The Latins them¬ 
selves were peasant farmers, with¬ 
out smiths or artisans among 
them. If a farmer needed a plow¬ 
share or a knife, he drove an ox 
across the plain to the bank of the Tiber, or sometimes car¬ 
ried grain there, to trade it to some Etruscan for the tool. 

About twelve miles up the Tiber (a third of the way from 
the sea to the mountains) the river could be crossed by a ford 
at the foot of an island (map, p. 151). To this place Etruscan 
traders very early began to bring wares of metal and wood on 
regular “ market days,” to tempt this profitable Latin trade. 
Now and then, too, a Cretan or Phoenician ship thought it 
worth while to row up the river; and to the same point the Sa¬ 
bines from the foothills of the Apennines floated down their 
wine and grain on flat barges. Just south of the ford arose a 
remarkable group of seven low hills. The level space between 
these hills, opening on the river, became the regular market 
or Forum, for all this trade. 

At some early date the Etruscans improved the river-crossing 
by building a bridge there. The Latins feared lest the Etruscans 
use it for armed invasion, and so they guarded their end of it by 
building a square fort about the top of the Palatine, the steepest 
hill close by. Here a permanent Latin town at once grew up. 
This “square town” (the earliest “Rome”) dates back at least 
to 1200 b.c. ; and in places the walls may still be traced. 







THE SEVEN HILLS 


151 


Early settlements were made also on at least two other of 
the seven hills. Roman tradition says that one of these towns 
was founded by an invading tribe of Sabines, and the other by 
a conquering Etruscan tribe. No doubt, there was a long period 



1. Citadel (Arx). 5. “Wall of Romulus.” 

2. Temple of Jupiter (Capitolinus). 6. Temple of Vesta. 

3. “Quays of the Tarquins.” 7. Senate House (Curia). 

4. Citadel at Janiculum. 8. Comitium. 

of war between the three hill-forts, but, finally, the three settle¬ 
ments were united into one state, on an equal footing. Thus began 
the process of association that was later to unite Italy. Rome was a 
city, not of one hill, like most Italian towns, but of seven hills. 
About 750 b.c. the old kings gave way to “tyrants” (the 


Other early 
settlements 
on the 
seven hills; 
and fed¬ 
eration 











152 


EARLY ROME 



Etruscan 
“ tyrants ’ 
and their 
works 


legendary Servius and the Tarquins) like those who seized 
power in Greek cities at about that time. Some of them seem 
to have been Etruscan adventurers, or conquerers. These 
“tyrants” drained the marshes and inclosed all seven hills 
within one wall — the so-called “ wall of Servius ” — taking 
in large open spaces for future city growth. The huge drain 


Rome the 
head of 
the Latin 
confederacy 


Etruscan Tombs near Orvieto, not far from Rome. A name on one 
tomb is made out to be Tarkhnos — which may be the Tarquinius 
(Tarquin) of Roman story. 

(Cloaca Maxima) and the remains of a massive wall pictured 
in these pages are supposed to belong to this period. 

At the Tiber mouth, these new kings founded Ostia, the first 
Roman colony, for a port; and, on the north side of the river, 
Rome seized and fortified Mount Janiculum. Before the year 
500, several conquered Latin towns had been razed, their inhabit¬ 
ants brought to Rome, and Rome had succeeded to the headship 
of the Latin confederacy . 

The life of the early Romans was plain and simple. Their 
houses were small huts, often only one room, with no chimney 
or window. The open door and an opening in the peaked roof 







HOME LIFE AND RELIGION 


153 


let out the smoke from the hearth fire, and let in light; and a Home life 
slight cavity directly below the roof-opening received the rain. £ 0 ^ ly 
Religion centered about the home and the daily tasks. For 
each house the door had its protecting god Janus, two-faced. Religion 
looking in and out; and each hearth fire had the goddess Vesta. 

When the city grew powerful, it had a city Janus, and a city 
Vesta. In the ancient round temple of Vesta, the holy fire of 


So-called Temple of Vesta, probably having nothing in common with 
the real ancient temple of the goddess except its circular form. The 
origin of this comparatively late building is not known. It is now a 
church. 



the city was kept always bright by the priestesses (Vestal 
Virgins), who had to keep themselves pure in thought and act, 
that they might not pollute its purity. 

Next to the house gods came the gods of the farm: Saturn, the 
god of sowing; Ceres, the goddess who made the grain grow; 
Venus, another goddess of fruitfulness; and Terminus, a god 
who dwelt in each boundary pillar, to guard the bounds of the 
farm — and, later, the boundaries of the state. 

The early Romans had also an ancestor worship at each family 
tomb, and each Latin tribe had its ancestral deity. The war 
god, Mars, father of the fabled Romulus, was at first the special 












154 


EARLY ROME 


The augurs 


Patricians 

and 

plebeians 


The 

patrician 

family 


god of Rome. But at the head of all the tribal gods of Latium 
stood Jupiter (Father Jove); and when Rome became the cen¬ 
tral Latin power, Jupiter became the center of the Roman re¬ 
ligion. The later Romans borrowed some Greek stories about 
the gods (p. 65); but they lacked poetic imagination to create 
a beautiful mythology, as the Greeks had done. 

The gods at Rome manifested their will not by oracles but 
by omens, or auspices. These auspices were sought especially in 
the conduct of birds, and in the color and size of the entrails 
of animals. The interpretation of such signs became a kind of 
science, in the possession of a “college” (i collection ) of augurs. 
Their “science” came from the Etruscans, and seems to have 
been related to old Babylonian customs. 

And the thrifty Roman drove hard bargains with his gods. 
The augurs, or soothsayers, called for fresh animals until the 
entrails gave the signs desired by the ruling magistrate, and 
then the gods were just as much bound as if they had shown 
favor at the first trial. The sky was watched until the de¬ 
sired birds did appear, and, in the later periods, tame birds were 
kept to give the required indications. 

Like the Greek cities, Italian cities contained many non¬ 
citizens. In Rome this class was especially large, partly be¬ 
cause the city had brought within its walls many clans from 
conquered cities, and partly because adventurers and refugees 
thronged to a prosperous commercial center. These non¬ 
citizens were plebeians. Some of them were rich ; but none of 
them had any part in the religion, or law, or politics of the city, 
nor could they intermarry with citizens. 

The citizens (the descendants of the three original tribes) 
were patricians, or “men with fathers.” The Roman father 
had complete authority over his sons and grandsons as long as 
he lived, even when they were grown men and perhaps in the 
ruling offices of the city. When his son took a wife, she, too, 
leaving her own family, came under his control. His own 
daughters passed by marriage from his hand under that of 
some other house-father. The father ruled his household. 





PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS 


155 




Assembly was much 
like the Homeric 
gathering. It met 
only at the call of 
the king. It did not 
debate. It listened 
to the king’s propos¬ 
als, and voted yes or 
no. 

Originally the army 
was made up of the 
patricians and their 
immediate depend¬ 
ents. But as the 
plebeians grew in 
numbers, the kings 
needed their service 
also. According to 
legend, “ Servius ” 
divided all landhold- 



and the households of his male descendants , as priest, judge, and 
king. He could sell or slay his wife, unmarried daughter, 
grown-up son, or son’s.wife; and all that was theirs was his. 

The patrician government had three parts. The king stood 
to the state as the father to the family. The Senate seems to 
have been originally 
a council of the chiefs 
of the 300 clans (or 
gentes) that made up 
the three tribes. The 


So-called Wall of Servius. The old leg¬ 
ends said that Servius built a wall about 
the seven hills. Cf. p. 151. This wall 
was thirteen feet thick and fifty feet high. 
It consisted of a huge rampart of earth, 
faced on each side by a wall of immense 
stones fitted together without mortar. Part 
of this colossal structure has been un- 
ers, plebeian as well covered recently on the Aventine. 

as patrician, into six 

classes, armed according to their wealth; and each of these classes 
was divided into a fixed number of companies, or centuries. 
Now in barbarous society, the obligation to fight and the right 
to vote go together (cf. page 76), and gradually this army 
of centuries became, in peace, an Assembly of Centuries, 


The 

patrician 

government 


Gains by 
the plebs 
under the 
tyrants 


The 

Assembly of 
Centuries 














156 


EARLY ROME 


The 

patrician 
minority 
manage to 
control the 
Assembly 


which took over the political power of the older patrician 
Assembly. 

The patricians, however, held most of the power in this new 
gathering. As population increased, the poorer classes grew in 
numbers faster than the rich; but they did not gain duly in 
political weight, because the patricians kept the number of cen¬ 
turies from being changed. The patricians had a majority 
in the centuries of the richer classes. These centuries shrank 
up into skeleton companies, while the centuries of *the lower 
classes came to contain far more than 100 men each; but each 
century , full or skeleton, counted just one vote. This gave the 
patricians a vast advantage over the more numerous plebeians. 

None the less it was a gain that the position of a man was 
fixed not by his birth, but by his wealth — something that he 
might help change. The first great barrier against democracy 
was broken down. 




CHAPTER XVII 


THE EARLY REPUBLIC, TO 266 B.C. 

About 500 b.c. the patricians replaced their king by two 
elected consuls, 1 ruling for one year only. For that year, the 
consuls kept most of the old royal power — except that either 
might stop any act of the other by calling out Veto (“I forbid”). 

The danger of a deadlock by a mutual veto, which might be 
fatal in a time of foreign peril, was avoided by a curious ar¬ 
rangement. At the request of the Senate either consul might 
appoint a dictator. This officer was the old king revived, save 
that his term of office could not exceed six months. 

The first century and a half of the Republic was a stern con¬ 
flict between patricians and plebeians. The last kings had 
leaned upon the plebeians and had protected them. That 
order had lost, not gained, by the revolution. The overthrow 
of the kings had left Rome a patrician oligarchy. The ple¬ 
beians could hold no office; they controlled only a minority 
of centuries in the Assembly, and they had no way even to get 
a measure considered. At best, they could vote only upon 
laws proposed by patrician magistrates, and they could help 
elect only patrician officers, who had been nominated by other 
patricians. The patrician Senate, too, had a final veto upon 
any vote of the centuries; and, in the last resort, the patrician 
consuls could always fall back upon the patrician augurs to 
prevent a possible plebeian victory — since the augurs could 
forbid a vote by declaring the auspices unfavorable. Law was 
unwritten, and, to the plebs, unknown, so that it was easy 
for a patrician to take shameful advantage in lawsuits. 

The ruling class used their political advantages to secure 
unjust economic advantages. When Rome conquered a hos¬ 
tile city, she took away a half or a third of its territory. This 

1 The stories for this period — Battle of Lake Regillus, Brutus and His 
Sons, Horatius at the Bridge, and the Porsenna anecdotes — should be 
read in Davis’ Readings or in Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. 

157 


The consuls 


The 

dictator 


Class 

struggles 







158 


EARLY ROME 


Unjust 

privilege 


War hard 
upon the 
poor 


Plebeian 

slavery 


Plebeians 
win a 
“ general 
strike ” 


new territory became a common pasture ground. It belonged 
to the state, and a small tax was paid for the right to graze cattle 
upon it. But, by selfish patrician law, only the patricians had 
the right to use this grazing land; and the patrician officers 
ceased even to collect the grazing tax. Thus the public land, 
won by plebeian blood, was enjoyed by the patricians as private 
patrician property. 

The farmer was called away frequently to battle. The 
plebeian had no servants to till his fields in his absence; and 
his possessions were more exposed to hostile forays than were 
the strongly fortified holdings of his greater neighbor. He 
might return to find his crops ruined by delay, or his homestead 
in ashes. Thus, more and more, the plebeians were forced to 
borrow tax money, or to get advances of seed corn and cattle 
from patrician money lenders. On failure to pay, the debtor 
became the property of the creditor. He was compelled there¬ 
after to till his land (no longer his) for the creditor’s benefit; or, 
if he refused to accept this result, he was cast into a dungeon, 
loaded with chains, and torn with stripes. There were a few 
rich plebeians (from gain by trade), but they too were bitterly 
dissatisfied because they could not hold office or intermarry 
with the old Roman families. 

Livy, an early Roman historian, gives a graphic account of 
the first great clash between the classes — in 497 b.c. : 

The plebs, driven to despair by the cruelty of patrician creditors, 
refused to serve in the war against the Volscians, until the consul won 
them over by freeing all debtors from prison. But when the army- 
returned victorious, the other consul refused to recognize his col¬ 
league’s acts; he arrested the debtors again, and enforced the law with 
merciless cruelty. On a renewal of the war, the betrayed plebs again 
declined to fight; but finally Manius Valerius (of the great Valerian 
house “that loved the people well”) was made dictator, and him they 
trusted. Victory again followed; but Valerius was unable to get the 
consent of the Senate to his proposed changes in the law. So the 
plebeian army, still in battle array outside the gates, marched away 
to a hill across the Anio, some three miles from Rome, where, they 
declared, they were going to build a Rome of their own. This first 
“general strike” in history forced the patricians to some real conces¬ 
sions (p. 159), and the plebs returned from the “Sacred Mount.” 


CLASS STRIFE 


159 


The patricians were especially bitter toward any of their own 
order who were great-souled enough to dare take the side of the 
people. The first such hero was Spurius Cassius. He had 
served Rome gloriously in war and in statesmanship, and finally, 
as consul, he proposed a reform in the selfish patrician manage¬ 
ment of the public lands. The patricians raised the cry that 
he was trying to win popular favor so as to make himself tyrant. 
This was a favorite patrician trick — not unknown to much 
later ages. The plebeians allowed themselves to be fooled into 
deserting their noble champion, and he was put to death. 
Under like conditions, two other heroes, Spurius Maelius and 
Marcus Manlius, the man who had saved Rome from the Gauls 
(p. 161), fell before like charges. 

The secession of 497 b.c. gave the plebs the right to choose 
tribunes, who had power to stop any magistrate in any act by 
merely calling out veto. From a seat just outside the Senate 
door, the tribune’s shout could even stop proceedings in that 
body, and he could forbid a vote in the Assembly. Thus these 
representatives of the plebs could bring the whole patrician 
government to a standstill. This veto power could be exer¬ 
cised only within the city (not in war). A tribune’s door was 
left always unlocked, so that a plebeian in trouble might have 
instant admission, and the tribune’s person was made sacred, 
— a device which did not always protect against patrician 
daggers. 

The next great step dates from 460 b.c., when the plebs 
began to demand written laws. The patricians opposed the 
demand furiously, but after a ten-year contest a board of ten 
men ( Decemvirs ) was elected to put the laws into writing. 
Their laws were engraved on twelve stone tables, in short, 
crisp sentences, and set up where all might read them. These 
“Laws of the Twelve Tables” were the basis of all later Roman 
law. Like the first written laws at Athens, they were very se¬ 
vere, and were for the most part simply old customs reduced to 
writing. The new thing about them was that they were now 
known to all, and that they applied to plebeian and patrician alike. 

Then came a political gain. At some early date (legend 


Patrician 
heroes who 
stood for 
justice 


Tribunes 


The Twelve 
Tables 






160 


EARLY ROME 


Assembly 
by Tribes 


A double 
state 


The 

Licinian 
Laws, 
367 B.C. 


Victory of 
the plebs 


says in the days of Servius) the city and its territory outside 
the walls had been divided into twenty-one “wards, or “tribes,” 
for the military levy. In some way the meeting of the inhabit¬ 
ants of these local units grew into a regular “Assembly.” 
The plebeians (who had no complete organization in blood tribes) 
had come to use this new Assembly of place “Tribes” to choose 
their tribunes and to adopt plans ; and here they passed decrees 
(plebiscita ) binding upon all of their order. The tribunes called 
this Assembly together and presided over it, as the consuls did 
with the Assembly of Centuries. Now by threat of another 
“strike,” the plebs forced the patricians to agree that their 
plebiscites should be law, binding upon the whole state, just as 
the decrees of the Assembly of Centuries were. (The Senate, 
of course, kept a veto upon both assemblies.) 

Thus the first half century of conflict set up a plebeian govern¬ 
ment over against the patrician government, — Assembly of 
Tribes and its Tribunes over against Assembly of Centuries 
and its Consuls. There was no arbiter, and no check 
upon civil war except the Roman preference for constitutional 
methods. 

To fuse these two rival governments into one took nearly 
a century more. Even after the two orders had begun to inter¬ 
marry, the patricians long resisted all attempts to open to 
plebeians the sacred office of consul. In 377 B.C. the final 
campaign began. Under the wise leadership of the tribune 
Licinius Stolo , the plebeians united firmly in a ten-year struggle 
for a group of measures known as the Licinian Laws: (1) 
that at least one consul each year must be a plebeian; (2) that 
no citizen should hold more than 300 acres of the public lands; 
and (3) that payment of debts might be postponed for three 
years — a measure made necessary by the universal distress 
that had followed a recent invasion by savage Gauls (p. 161). 

Year by year the plebeians reelected Licinius and passed the 
decrees anew in the Assembly of the Tribes. Each time the 
Senate vetoed the measures. Then the tribunes forbade the 
election of magistrates for the year, and so left the state without 


FUSION OF THE TWO ORDERS 161 

regular government (though one year, during danger of foreign 
war, they patriotically permitted consuls to be chosen). At 
last the patricians tried to buy off the masses, by offering to yield 
on the matters of debts and lands if they would drop the demand 
regarding the consulship. But Licinius succeeded in holding 
his party together for the full program; and, in 367, the Senate 
gave way and the plebeian decrees became law. 

Plebeian consuls now nominated plebeians for other offices; 
and, since appointments to the Senate were made from those 
who had held high office, that body itself gradually became 
plebeian. The long struggle had seen no violent revolutions 
and no massacres, such as were common in class struggles in 
Greek cities. Except for the assassination of one tribune 
(Genucius) and a little political trickery now and then, the 
patricians after each defeat accepted the result in good faith, 
and the distinction between the classes soon died out. 

While Rome was most weakened by internal strife, she had 
been obliged also to fight continually for life against outside 
foes, — Etruscans, Sabines, Volscians; and in 390 b.c. the city 
was actually occupied by a horde of invading Gauls except 
that a small garrison, under the soldier Marcus Manlius 
(p. 159), still held the Capitoline citadel. Later Romans told 
the story that one night the barbarians had almost surprised 
even this last defense, but some hungry geese, kept there for 
religious sacrifices, awakened Manlius by their noisy cackling 
just in time for him to hurl back the invaders from the walls. 

But the Gauls were ravaged by the deadly malaria of the Ro¬ 
man plain, and they had little skill or patience for a regular siege. 
Finally they withdrew on the payment of a huge ransom. 
While the gold was being weighed, the Romans objected to 
the scales; whereupon, as the story runs, the Gallic chieftain, 
Brennus, threw his sword into the scale exclaiming “Vae Vic- 
tis”— “woe to the vanquished.” Such has been the principle 
of many a peace treaty since. 

Other states in Italy had suffered by the Gauls as much as 
Rome, or more. Rome at once stood forth as the champion of 


The Gallic 
invasion 


Rome 

sacked 




162 


EARLY ROME 


Rome 
expels the 
Gauls from 
Italy 


The war 

with 

Pyrrhus 


Italian civilization against the barbarians. After her own im¬ 
mediate peril was past, she followed up the invaders of Italy 
in vigorous campaigns until they withdrew to the Po valley. 
Then, as soon as the Licinian Laws had united her own people, 
she turned in earnest to unite Italy under her rule. Some powerful 
alliances were formed against her, especially one between the 
warlike Samnites of the southern Apennines and the turbulent 
Gauls of the Po valley; but, using to the full the advantage of 
her central position, Rome always beat her foes one by one 
before they could unite their forces. 



A Coin of Pyrrhus 


The final struggle was with Tarentum, a great Greek city of 
the south, which had called in aid from Pyrrhus, the chivalrous 
king of Epirus. 

Pyrrhus was one of the Greek military adventurers who arose 
after the death of Alexander. He came to Italy with a great 

armament and with vast 
designs. He hoped to 
unite the Greek cities of 
Magna Graecia and Sicily, 
and then to subdue Car¬ 
thage, the ancient enemy 
of Hellenes in the West. 
He knew little of Rome; 
but at the call of Tarentum he found himself engaged as a 
Greek champion with this new power. He won some vic¬ 
tories, chiefly through his elephants, which the Romans had 
never before encountered; but, anxious to carry out his wider 
plans, he offered a favorable peace. Under the leadership of 
an aged and blind senator, Appius Claudius, defeated Rome an¬ 
swered haughtily that she would treat with no invader while 
he stood upon Italian soil. 

Pyrrhus chafed at the delay, and finally hurried off to Sicily, 
leaving his victory incomplete. The steady Roman advance 
called him back, and a great Roman victory at Beneventum 
(275 b.c.) ruined his dream of empire and gave Rome that 
sovereignty of Italy which she had claimed so resolutely. In 


BECOMES HEAD OF ITALY 


163 


266, she rounded off her work by conquering that part of Cisal¬ 
pine Gaul which lay south of the Po. 

The internal strife between classes in Rome had closed in 367. 
That strife had fused patricians and plebeians into one Roman 
people. Then that Roman people at once turned to unite Italy — 
and completed the task in just a century, 367-266 B.C. 

For Further Reading. — Davis’ Readings, II, Nos. 9-15; Ihne’s 
Early Rome, 135-151, 165-190; and Pelham’s Outlines, 68-97. 

Special Report by a student, from library material: the story of 
the Roman army sent “ under the yoke ” by the Samnite Pontius, and 
Rome’s perfidy. 







CHAPTER XVIII 


Classes of 
citizens 


Roman 

colonies 


Municipla 


The Tribes 
increased 
to thirty-five 


UNITED ITALY UNDER ROMAN RULE AFTER 266 B.C. 

I. “CITIZENS” AND “SUBJECTS ” 

Italy now contained some 5,000,000 people. More than a 
fourth of these (some 1,400,000) were Roman citizens. The rest 
were subjects , outside the Roman state. 

The majority of Roman citizens no longer lived at Rome. 
Large parts of Latium and Etruria and Campania had become 
“suburbs” of Rome; and other towns of Roman citizens were 
found in distant parts of Italy. There were now three classes 
of citizens : (1) the inhabitants of Rome itself; (2) members of 
Roman colonies; and (3) members of Roman municipia. 

From an early date (p. 152) Rome had planted colonies of her 
citizens about the central city as military posts. The colonists 
and their descendants kept all the rights of citizens. Each 
colony had control over its local affairs in an Assembly of its 
own; but representative government had not been worked out , 
and in order to vote upon matters that concerned the whole 
Roman state, the colonists had to come to Rome at the meeting 
of the Assembly there. This, of course, was usually impossible. 

There were many conquered towns, too — especially the 
Latin and Sabine towns — which Rome incorporated into the 
state. Such a town was called a municipium. These municipia 
differed little from Roman colonies except in origin. (They 
represent, therefore, a new contribution to politics. Athens 
had invented a cleruch system — the best advance up to her 
time — corresponding to Rome’s colonies; but she did not. 
learn to give citizenship to conquered states. By 266 B.C., Rome 
had a “citizen” body five times as large as Athens ever had.) 

To suit this expansion of the state, the twenty-one Roman 
“tribes” (p. 160) were increased gradually to thirty-five, — four 
in the city, the rest in adjoining districts. At first these were 

164 


CITIZENS AND SUBJECTS 


165 


real divisions of territory; but, once enrolled in a given tribe, 
a man remained a member, no matter where he lived, and his 
son after him. As new communities were given citizenship, they 
were enrolled in the old thirty-five tribes. Each tribe had one 
vote in the Assembly. 

Rome and her citizens owned directly one third the land of 
Italy. All Roman citizens, too, had certain valued rights. 
Under the head of private rights, they might (1) acquire prop¬ 
erty and (2) intermarry in any of Rome’s possessions. Their 
public rights included the right (1) to vote in the Assembly 
of the Tribes, (2) to hold any office, and (3) to appeal to the 
Assembly if condemned to death or to bodily punishment. 

In return for these privileges, the citizens furnished half the 
army of Italy and paid all the direct taxes. 

Outside the Roman state was subject-Italy, in three main 
classes, Latin colonies, Prefectures, and u Allies.” Highest 
in privilege among these stood the Latins. This name did not 
apply now to the old Latin towns (nearly all of which had become 
municipia), but to thirty-five colonies of a new kind, sent out 
far beyond Latium {after 338 ) from Rome’s landless citizens. 

These colonists were not granted full citizenship, as were the 
Roman colonies, but only the “ Latin right.” That is, their citi¬ 
zens had the private rights of Romans; and they might acquire 
full public rights also, and become Roman citizens in all respects, 
by removing to Rome and enrolling in one of the tribes. In local 
affairs, the Latin colonies had full self-government, like the Roman 
colonies and the municipia. 

Most numerous of all the inhabitants of Italy stood the mass 
of subject Greeks, Italians, and Etruscans, under the general 
name of Italian Allies. These cities differed greatly in con¬ 
dition among themselves. Each one was bound to Rome by 
its separate treaty, and these treaties varied widely. None of 
the “Allies” had either the private or public rights of Romans, 
and they were isolated jealously one from another; but in general 
they bore few burdens and enjoyed local self-government and 
Roman protection. 


Rights and 
duties of 
citizens 


The 

Latins 


The 

“ Allies n 







166 UNITED ITALY AFTER 266 B.G 

The class of Prefectures consisted of three or four conquered 
towns, too deep offenders to warrant them in asking either the 
“Latin right” or “alliance.” They had no self-government. 
Alone of all cities in Italy, their local government was adminis¬ 
tered for them by prefects sent out from Rome. 



The Appian Way To-day, showing the original pavement. 


Thus Rome cautiously but steadily incorporated conquests 
into herself on a basis of equal rights, while over her remaining 
subjects she held dominion by her justice and, even more, by a 
wise toleration of local customs. Italy had become a confederacy 
under a queen city. 






ROMAN ROADS 


167 


At the same time Rome sternly isolated the subject commu¬ 
nities. Her “ Allies’’ had no connection with one another except 
through the head city. Even the famous roads that marked her 
dominion “ all led to Rome.” Moreover, she took skillful advan¬ 
tage of the grades of inferiority she had created to foment jealous¬ 
ies. In politics as in war, her policy was “Divide and conquer .” 

The Roman roads were bonds of union. Rome began that 
magnificent system in 312 b.c. by building the Via Appia 
to new possessions in Campania. This was the work of the 
censor Appius Claudius — the man who, old and blind, after¬ 
ward held Rome firm against Pyrrhus and haughtily claimed 
for Rome the dominion of all Italy (p. 162). 

Nothing was permitted to obstruct the course of these high¬ 
ways. Mountains were tunneled ; rivers were bridged ; marshes 
were spanned by viaducts of masonry. The construction 
was slow and costly. First the workmen removed all loose 
soil down to some firm strata, preferably the native rock. Then 
was laid a layer of large stones, then one of smaller, and at 
least one more of smaller ones still, — all bound together — some 
two feet in thickness — by an excellent cement. The top was 
then leveled carefully and paved smoothly with huge slabs 
of rock fitted to one another with the greatest nicety. Remains 
of these roads in good condition to-day still “mark the lands 
where Rome has ruled.” 

Under the kings the army was similar to the old Dorian organ¬ 
ization, — a dense hoplite array, usually eight deep. In Greece 
the next step was to deepen and close the ranks still further 
into the massive phalanx. In Italy, instead, they were broken 
up into three successive lines, and each line was divided further 
into small companies, forming th e flexible legion. 

The phalanx depended upon long spears. While it remained 
unbroken and could present its front, it was invulnerable; but 
if disordered by uneven ground, or if taken in flank, it was 
doomed. The legion used the hurling javelin to disorder the 
enemyis ranks before immediate contact (as moderns have used 
musketry), and the famous Roman short sword for close combat 


Roman 

roads 


The army 





168 


UNITED ITALY AFTER 266 B C. 


(as moderns have used the bayonet). Flexibility, individuality, 
and constancy took the place of the collective lance thrust of the 
unwieldy phalanx. 

The legion numbered about five thousand, and was made up 
of Roman citizens. Each legion was accompanied by about 



five thousand men from the Allies. These auxiliaries served 
on the wings of the legion as light-armed troops, and as cavalry. 

The camp The Roman camp was characteristic of a people whose 
colonies were garrisons. Where the army encamped — even if 
for only a single night — there grew up in an hour a fortified 
city, with earth walls and regular streets. This system allowed 









ROMAN GOVERNMENT 


169 


the Romans often “to conquer by sitting still,” declining 
or giving battle at their own option; while, too, when they 
did fight, they did so with a fortified and guarded refuge in 
their rear. The importance of these camps, as the sites of cities 
over Europe, is shown by the frequency of the Roman word castra 
(camp) in English place-names, as in Chester, Rochester, Win¬ 
chester, Dorchester, Manchester. 

II. THE GOVERNMENT 

The officers of chief dignity in the Roman Republic, from 
least to greatest, were : Aediles (two), with oversight over police 
and public works ; Praetors (two), with the chief judicial power; 
Consuls (two), leaders in war and in foreign policy; Censors 
(two), with power to appoint and to degrade Senators, and 
with supreme oversight over morals; Dictator (one, and in 
critical times only). These five were called curule offices, 
because the holders kept the right to use the curule chair — the 
ivory “ throne” of the old kings. There were also eight quaestors 
(in charge of the treasury and with some judicial power) and 
the ten tribunes. 

A new aristocracy had appeared. Each curule official, by 
law, handed down to his descendants the right to keep upon 
the walls of their living rooms the wax masks of ancestors, 
and to carry them in a public procession at the funeral of a 
member of the family. A chief part of such a funeral was an 
oration commemorating the virtues and deeds of the ancestors, 
whose images were present (Davis’ Readings, II, No. 19). 
Families with this privilege were called nobles (“the known”). 

Before the year 300 b.c., the nobles began to be jealous of 
the admission of “new men” to their ranks; and their united 
influence soon controlled nearly all curule elections in favor of 
some member of their own order. To make this easier, they 
secured a law fixing the order in which these offices could be 
attained: no one could be elected aedile until he had held the 
quaestorship, nor praetor till he had been aedile, nor consul 
till he had been praetor. Then the nobles had to watch only 
the election of quaestors. And since senators now had to be 


The curule 
offices 


The new 

curule 

aristocracy 






170 


THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


The Senate 
the guiding 
force at 
Rome 


Rome's 
best age 


A state of 
small free 
farmers 


appointed from ex-officials, “nobles” became equivalent to 
“ the senatorial order.” 

The Senate was really the guiding force in the government. 
It contained the wisdom and experience of Rome. The pressure 
of constant and dangerous wars, and the growing complexity 
of foreign relations even in peace, made it inevitable that this 
far-seeing, compact, experienced body should assume authority 
which in theory belonged to the clumsy, inexperienced Assembly. 
“Rome became a complete aristocracy with democratic forms” 
No consul would think of bringing a law before the people 
without the previous approval of the Senate (so that indirectly 
that body, rather than the Assembly, had become the real 
legislature).- No officer would draw money from the treasury 
without its consent. It declared and managed wars. It 
received ambassadors and made alliances. And certainly, 
for over a hundred years, by its sagacity and energy, this “ as¬ 
sembly of kings” (as the ambassador from Pyrrhus called it) 
justified its usurpation. 

III. ROMAN SOCIETY AT ITS BEST 

From 367 to about 200 b.c. is the period of greatest Roman 
vigor. The old class distinctions had died out, and the new aris¬ 
tocracy of office was still in its “age of service.” There was 
soon to come a new struggle between rich and poor — but this 
had not yet begun. 

The Roman citizens, in the main, patrician or plebeian by 
descent, were still yeomen farmers, who worked hard and lived 
plainly. The rapid gain in territory after 367 made it possible to 
turn the city poor into land-owners — in a colony if not near 
Rome. Each farmer tilled his few acres with his own hands and 
the help of his own sons. Every eighth day he came to the 
city with a load for “ market,” — wheat, barley, garden vege¬ 
tables, fruit, horses, cattle, sheep, or hogs. 

There was little wealth and little extreme poverty. Manius 
Curio , the conqueror of the Samnites and of Pyrrhus, was a 
peasant. Plutarch tells us that, though he had “triumphed” 
thrice, he continued to live in a cottage on a little three-acre 


PLATE XXIII 





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can town became a Roman colony in 383 b.c. 





















PLATE XXIV 



Pompeii, as the excavations show it. A large part of our knowledge con¬ 
cerning the life of Roman Italy is due to the rediscovery of this buried 
city. Vesuvius (shown in the background) was supposed to be an 
extinct volcano, but in 79 a.d. it belched forth in terrible eruption, bury¬ 
ing two cities and many villages in ashes and lava. Eighteen hundred 
years later, by the chance digging of a well, the site of Pompeii, the 
larger of the two cities, was re¬ 
discovered. In recent years it 
has been carefully excavated; and 
to-day a visitor can walk through 
the streets of an ancient city, 
viewing perfectly preserved 
houses, shops, temples, baths, 
ornaments, and tools of the men 
of that day when the volcanic 
flood came upon them. In the 
Art Museums of our larger mod¬ 
ern cities there are interesting 
Pompeian remains, and sometimes 
“reconstructed” models of houses 
and temples. 












A SIMPLE SOCIETY TO 200 B.C. 


171 


plot which he tilled with his own hands. Here once some 
Samnite ambassadors found him dressing turnips in the chimney 
corner, when they came to offer him a large present of gold. 
Curio refused the gift: “ A man,” said he, “who can be content 
with this supper hath no need of gold; and I count it glory, not 
to possess wealth, but to rule those who do.” This sober 
history quite matches the less trustworthy legend of Cincinnatus 
of the fifth century, called from the plow on his three-acre 
farm to become dictator and save Rome from a hostile inva¬ 
sion, and returning to the plow again, all in sixteen days. 

In the city itself, as no doubt in all Italian towns, the crafts¬ 
men were organized in “unions” (gilds). These gilds were 
not for the purpose of raising wages, as with us, nor mainly 
for improving the character of the work, as in later centuries 
in Europe. They were associations for friendly intercourse 
and mutual helpfulness among the members, and they illustrate 
the extraordinary Roman capacity for teamwork, — in contrast 
to the individuality of Greek life. 

Commerce ( trade with other lands) paid huge profits to those 
successful adventurers who did not too often lose vessels by ship¬ 
wreck or pirates. The few rich Romans long disdained the 
business for themselves; but they early began to use their 
capital in it through their slaves or former slaves; and toward 
200 b.c. their profits were building up a new class of merchants 
and money-kings. 

The oldest Roman word for money ( pecunia , from which 
comes our pecuniary) came from the word for herd (pecus). 
This points to a time when payments were made chiefly in 
cattle (p. 150). About 400 b.c., rude blocks of copper were 
stamped with the figure of an ox; and before 300 b.c., under 
the influence of Magna Graecia, Rome adopted true copper coins 
in the form of circular disks. Even earlier, the Romans had 
“estimated” in copper ( aes ), counting by the pound weight; and 
now they made their copper coins each one twelfth of a pound (an 
old Babylonian unit of weight). Such a coin was an “uncia,” 
— one ounce (Troy weight). Silver was not used either for 
money or for household purposes until after the union of Italy. 


Craft gilds 


Commerce 
makes new 
money- 
kings 


Roman 

money 






172 


THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


Home-life 


Roman 

dress 


Education 


Science and 
learning 


The house had added rooms on sides and rear, and openings for 
windows; but it was still exceedingly simple. A plain table, 
wooden couches, and a few stools and simple cooking utensils 
comprised the furniture. Artificial warmth and light were 
secured by “braziers” and lamps, like those of the Greeks. 
The Roman took his chief meal at midday. In early times, 
the main food was a “porridge” of ground meal boiled in water. 
Pork, especially in the form of sausage, was the favorite meat. 
Bread, from ground wheat or barley, was baked in flat, round 
cakes. Water or milk was the common drink, but wine mixed 
with water was coming into general use, after the fashion of the 
Greeks. The Romans who conquered Pyrrhus were a frugal, 
temperate people. 

Dress was as simple as the food. The Roman kept the 
primitive loin cloth of linen. Over this he drew a short-sleeved 
woolen shirt {tunic) falling to the knees. This made the common 
dress of the house, workshop, and field. In public the Roman 
wore an outer garment — a white woolen blanket, thrown 
about him in graceful folds. This was the famous toga, bor¬ 
rowed from the old Etruscans. Women wore a long and a 
short tunic, and, for the street, a blanket-wrap. Foot-gear 
was like that of the Greeks. Stockings and hats were alike un¬ 
known. Members of the senatorial families wore broad gold 
rings. 

Until seven, the children were in the mother’s care. After 
that age, boys went to a private school, taught usually by some 
Greek slave, where they learned to read, to write, and, in a lim¬ 
ited degree, to compute with Roman numerals. The only text¬ 
book was the Twelve Tables, which were learned by heart. 
Physical training was found in athletic games in the Campus 
Martius (p. 151), where the young Romans contended in running, 
wrestling, and in the use of the spear, sword, and javelin. 

Literature, under Greek influence, was just beginning at the 
close of the period. Roads, bridges, and aqueducts were built 
in the last half of the period on a magnificent scale, and the 
use of the round arch was so developed that we often speak 
of it as “ the Roman arch.” 


LIFE AND WORK 


173 


Undue praise has been given sometimes to the semi-barbaric 
excellence of early Rome. The Roman was haughty, obedient 
to law, self-controlled; but too often he was also coarse, cruel, 
and rapacious. The finest thing in his character was the 
willingness to sink personal or party advantage for the public 
weal. Next to this, and allied to it, is the capacity for team¬ 
work. Roman history, up to this point, is not the history of a 
few brilliant leaders: it is the story of a people. 

We have seen a village of rude shepherds and peasants grow 
into a city-state and then (by 264 b.c.) into the queen city of 
united Italy. During the next hundred years Italy was to 
organize the fringes of the three continents bordering the 
Mediterranean into one Graeco-Roman society. But it was 
not Rome’s genius in war, great as that was, which made the 
world Roman. It was her political wisdom and her organizing 
power. As Greece stands for art and intellectual culture, so 
Rome stands for government and law. A little later her poet 
Vergil wrote: 

“ Others, I grant, indeed, shall with more delicacy mold the breath¬ 
ing brass; from marble draw the features to the life; plead causes 
better; describe with a rod the courses of the heavens, and explain 
the rising stars. To rule the nations with imperial sway be thy care, 0 
Roman. These shall be thy arts: to impose terms of peace, to spare 
the humbled, and to crush the proud. ” 


A summary: 
Rome’s 
contribu¬ 
tions 








CHAPTER XIX 


The five 
world- 
powers in 
264 B.C. 


Carthage 


THE WINNING OF THE WORLD, 264-146 B.C. 

I. EXPANSION IN THE WEST 

In 264 b.c. Italy was one of five great Mediterranean states. 
Alexander the Great had been dead nearly sixty years, and the 
dominion of the eastern Mediterranean world was divided 
between the three great Greek kingdoms, Syria, Egypt, and 
Macedonia, with their numerous satellites. In the western 
Mediterranean, Carthage had held sway. Between East and 
West now stood forth Roman Italy, ready first to seize the West. 

Carthage was an ancient Phoenician colony on the finest 
harbor in North Africa. Her government, in form, was a 
republic, somewhat like Rome, but in reality it was a narrow 
oligarchy controlled by a few wealthy families. She was now 
at the height of her power, and the richest city in the world. 
She had built up a vast empire, including North Africa, Sardinia, 
Corsica, half of Sicily, and the coasts of Spain. In Africa alone 
she ruled three hundred cities, and her territory merged into 
the desert where tributary nomads roamed. The western Medi¬ 
terranean she regarded as a Punic 1 lake : foreign sailors caught 
trespassing there were cast into the sea. But the Greeks of 
South Italy had traded in those waters for five hundred years; 
and Rome, now mistress and protector of those Greek cities, was 
bound to defend their trading rights against the Carthaginian 
closed door. 

The strength of Carthage lay in her wealth and her navy, but 
her army was a motley mass of mercenaries. Her Roman foes 
represented her as wanting in honesty, and their epithet, “ Punic 
faith” is still a synonym for treachery. But Rome wrote the 

1 “Punic” is another form for “Phoenician,” and is used as a shorter ad¬ 
jective for “Carthaginian.” 


174 


WARS WITH CARTHAGE 


175 


history; and, even so, the charge of faithlessness holds more 
clearly against Rome. 

The occasion for the First Punic War was found in Sicily. 
The struggle lasted 23 years, and left Rome mistress of that 
island. Immediately after the peace, too, by a base mingling 
of violence and treachery, Rome seized from Carthage the islands 
of Sardinia and Corsica. (Then in 222 she completed her con¬ 
quest of Cisalpine Gaul up to the crescent wall of the Alps.) 

The Second Punic War is known as “the War with Hanni¬ 
bal.” The most brilliant Carthaginian general in the first war 
had been Hamilcar, surnamed Barca (“the lightning”). From 
Rome’s high-handed treachery in Sardinia, Hamilcar imbibed 
a deathless hatred for that state, and began to prepare for 
another conflict. To offset the loss of the great Mediterranean 
islands, he sought to extend Carthaginian dominion over Spain. 
The mines of that country, he saw, would furnish the needful 
wealth; and its hardy tribes, when disciplined, would make an 
infantry which might meet even the legions of Rome. 

When Hamilcar was about to cross to Spain, in 236, he swore 
his son Hannibal at the altar to eternal hostility to Rome. 
Hannibal was then a boy of nine years. He followed Hamilcar 
to the wars, and, as a youth, became a dashing cavalry officer 
and the idol of the soldiery. He used his camp leisure to store 
his mind with the culture of Greece. At twenty-six he suc¬ 
ceeded to the command in Spain, where he had already won the 
devotion and love of his fickle, mercenary troops. 

Hamilcar had made the rich south of Spain a Carthaginian 
province. Hannibal rapidly carried the frontier to the Ebro, 
collected a magnificent army of over a hundred thousand men, 
and besieged Saguntum, an ancient Greek colony, which had 
already sought Roman alliance. Now, in alarm and anger, 
Rome declared war (218 B.C.). 

Rome had intended to take the offensive. But, with auda¬ 
cious rapidity, Hannibal in five months had crossed the Pyrenees 
and the Rhone, fighting his way through the Gallic tribes; forced 
the unknown passes of the Alps, under conditions that made it 
a feat paralleled only by Alexander’s passage of the Hindukush; 


First 

Punic War, 

264-241 

B.C. 


The Second 
Punic War, 
218-202 
B.C. (The 
“War with 
Hannibal ” 


Hannibal 
in Spain 


Hannibal 

invades 

Italy 




176 


ROME WINS THE WEST 


Victories: 
Ticinus, 
Trebia, 
Trasimene 


Fabius 

dictator 


Cannae 


Fidelity of 

Rome’s 

Allies 

Except 
Capua and 
Syracuse 


and, leaving the bones of three fourths of his army between 
the Ebro and Po, startled Italy by appearing in Cisalpine Gaul, 
with 26,000 “ heroic shadows.” 

With these “emaciated scarecrows” Hannibal swiftly de¬ 
stroyed two hastily gathered Roman armies — at the Ticinus 
and at the Trebia. Then the recently pacified Gallic tribes 
rallied turbulently to swell his ranks. The next spring he 
crossed the Apennines, ambushed a Roman army of 40,000 
men, blinded with morning fog, near Lake Trasimene, and 
annihilated it, and carried fire and sword through Italy. 

Quintus Fabius Maximus was now named dictator, to save 
Rome. That wary old general adopted the wise policy of 
delay (“Fabian policy”) to wear out Hannibal. He would 
not give battle; but he followed close at the Carthaginian’s 
heels, from place to place. Even Hannibal could not catch 
fabius unawares; and he did not dare to attack the intrenched 
Roman camps. But he had to win victories to draw the Italian 
“Allies” from Rome, or he would have to flee from Italy. 
So far, not a city in Italy had opened its gates. 

But in Rome many people murmured impatiently, nick¬ 
naming Fabius Cunctator (the Laggard); and the following 
summer the new consuls were given 90,000 men — by far the 
largest army Rome had ever put in the field, and several times 
Hannibal’s army -— with orders to crush the invader. 

The result was the battle of Cannae — “a carnival of cold 
steel, a butchery, not a battle.” Hannibal lost 6000 men. 
Rome lost 60,000 dead and 20,000 prisoners. A consul, a 
fourth of the senators, nearly all the officers, and over a fifth 
of the fighting population of the city perished. Hannibal 
sent home a bushel of gold rings from the hands of fallen 
Roman nobles. 

Even this victory yielded little fruit. The mountain tribes 
of the south, eager for plunder, did join Hannibal, as did one 
Italian city, Capua. Syracuse, too, renounced its Roman 
alliance, and joined its ancient enemy Carthage. But the 
other cities — colonies, Latins, or Allies — closed their gates 
against him as resolutely as Rome itself, ■— and so gave mar- 




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SCALE OF MILES 


Roman Possessions and Allies 
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WARS WITH CARTHAGE 177 

velous testimony to the excellence of Roman rule and to the 
national spirit it had fostered. 

A third of the adult males of Italy had fallen in battle within 
three years, or were in camp, so that all industry was demoral¬ 
ized. But Rome’s greatness showed grandly in that hour 
of gloom. With splendid tenacity she refused even to receive 



Coin of Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse, long an ally of Rome against 
Carthage. 

Hannibal’s envoys or to consider his moderate proposals for 
peace. Nor would she ransom prisoners. Much as she needed 
her soldiers back, she preferred to teach her citizens that they 
ought at such a time to die for the Republic rather than sur¬ 
render. Taxes were doubled, and the rich gave cheerfully, 
even beyond these crushing demands. The days of mourning 
for the dead were shortened. Not a man was called back 
from Sicily or Spain. Instead Rome sent out new armies to those 
places ; and, by enrolling slaves, old men, boys, and the criminals 
from the prisons (arming them with the sacred trophies in the 
temples), she managed to put two hundred and fifty thousand 
troops into the field. 

Hannibal could maintain himself indefinitely in Italy. But 
he made no more headway. He had not force enough to capture 
any important walled town. So his only possible chances 
for success lay in arousing a general Mediterranean war against 
Rome, or in receiving strong reinforcements from Carthage or 
Spain. Philip V of Macedonia did ally himself with Hannibal, 
but he acted timidly and too late. Carthage showed a strange 


Roman 
grandeur 
in defeat 


Lack of 
concert 
among 
Rome’s foes 








178 


ROME WINS THE WEST 


Syracuse 

punished 


Changed 
character of 
the war 


“ Hannibal 
at the 
Gates ” 


apathy when victory was within her grasp, and even allowed 
Rome to keep command of the sea, without a struggle. 

Meantime Rome besieged Syracuse by land and sea, and 
after three years, took it by storm (212 b.c.), and, for a time, 
wiped it from the map. Works of art, accumulated through 
many centuries, were destroyed or carried away as plunder; 
and the city never recovered its old place in culture, power, 
or commerce. Indeed Rome’s barbarous cruelty to Syracuse 
was due, in no small measure, to her greedy wish to seize for 
herself the rich trade of the fated city. (The siege is memorable 
also for the scientific inventions of Archimedes, used in the 
defense. The philosopher himself was killed during the sack of 
the city. See Davis’ Readings, II, No. 27.) 

In Italy itself, Rome fell back upon iron constancy and stead¬ 
fast caution. The war became a long series of wasting sieges 
and marchings and counter marchings. Hannibal’s genius 
shone as unsurpassed as ever, earning him from modern military 
critics the title, “Father of Strategy”; but he found no more 
chance for dazzling victories. Meantime his African and 
Spanish veterans died off, and slowly the Romans learned 
from him how to wage war. 

For thirteen years after Cannae Hannibal maintained himself 
in Italy without reinforcement in men or money, — always 
winning a battle when he could engage the enemy in the field, — 
and directing operations as best he might in Spain, Sicily, Mace¬ 
donia, and Africa. But it was a war waged by one supreme 
genius against the most powerful and resolute nation in the 
world — and the genius was defeated after a sixteen years’ war. 

One more dramatic scene marked the struggle in Italy. The 
Romans had besieged Capua. In a daring attempt to relieve 
his ally, Hannibal marched to the very walls of Rome, ravaging 
the fields about the city. The Romans, however, were not to 
be enticed into a rash engagement, nor could the army around 
Capua be drawn from its prey. The only result of Hannibal’s 
desperate stroke was the fruitless fright he gave Rome, — such 
that for generations Roman mothers stilled their children by the 
terror-bearing phrase, “ Hannibal at the Gates! ” Roman 



WARS WITH CARTHAGE 


179 


stories relate, however, that citizens were found, even in that 
hour of fear, to show a defiant confidence by buying eagerly at a 
public sale the land where the invader lay encamped. Hannibal 
finally drew off, and Capua fell, — to meet a fate more harsh 
even than that of Syracuse. Its leading men were massa¬ 
cred ; most of the rest of the population were sold as slaves; 
and colonies of Roman veterans were planted on its lands. 

Hannibal’s one remaining chance lay in reinforcements by 
land from his brother Hasdrubal, whom he had left in charge 
in Spain. But for year after year, in spite of some great vic¬ 
tories, Hasdrubal had been checked by the overwhelming forces 
Rome sent against him. Finally, in 208, he did elude the Roman 
Scipio. Rome’s peril was never greater than when this second 
son of Barca crossed the Alps with 56,000 veteran soldiers. 
If the two Carthaginian armies joined, Hannibal could march 
at will through Italy, — and leading Latin colonies had already 
given Rome notice that they could not much longer endure 
the ravages of the war. 

Rome put forth its supreme effort, and threw 150,000 men 
between the two Carthaginian armies. By chance, a messenger 
from Hasdrubal to his brother was captured, and his plans 
discovered, while Hannibal was left ignorant of his approach. 
The opportunity was used to the full. The consul, Claudius 
Nero, with audacity worthy of Hannibal himself, left a small 
part of his force to deceive that leader, and hurrying northward 
with the speed of life and death, joined the other consul and 
fell upon Hasdrubal with crushing numbers at the Metaurus. 
The ghastly head of his long-expected brother, flung into his 
camp with true Roman brutality, was the first notice to Han¬ 
nibal of the ruin of his cause. (On all occasions, Hannibal had 
given chivalrous treatment to captives, and honorable burial 
to dead Roman generals.) 

Hannibal still remained invincible in the mountains of south¬ 
ern Italy. But Rome now carried the war into Africa. After 
Hasdrubal left Spain, Publius Cornelius Scipio, the Roman 
general there, rapidly subdued the whole peninsula, and, in 
204, he persuaded the Senate to send him with a great army 


Capua 

punished 


Rome’s 

darkest 

hour 


Victory 
of the 
Metaurus 


Scipio 
carries the 
war into 
Africa 


180 


ROME WINS THE EAST 


Hannibal’s 
one and 
fatal defeat 
at Zama 


Carthage 
“ blotted 
out,” 146 
B.C. 


against Carthage itself. Two years later, to meet this peril, 
Carthage recalled Hannibal. That great leader obeyed sadly, 
“leaving the country of his enemy,” says Livy, “with more 
regret than many an exile has left his own.” 

The same year (202 b.c.) the struggle closed with Hannibal’s 
first and only defeat, at the battle of Zama (Davis’ Readings , 
II, No. 28). Carthage lay at the mercy of the victor, and sued 
for peace. She gave up Spain and the islands of the western 
Mediterranean; surrendered her war elephants and all her 
ships of war save ten; paid a huge war indemnity, which was 
intended to keep her poor for many years; and became a de¬ 
pendent ally of Rome, promising to wage no war without 
Roman consent. Scipio received the proud surname Afri- 
canus. 

Forty years later there was a Third Punic War, marked by 
black Roman perfidy. Carthage was now harmless. But 
Roman fear was cruel and her commercial envy was rapacious. 
For years the narrow-minded but zealous Cato, a leader in the 
Roman Senate, closed every speech, no matter what the theme, 
with the phrase (< Delenda est Carthago ” (Carthage must be 
blotted out). More quietly but even more effectively the 
Roman merchant class strove to the same end, to prevent 
Carthage from reviving its ancient trade. 

Carthage was cautious, even abject; but at last by a long 
series of persecutions and treacheries Rome forced war upon her. 
After a four years’ heroic resistance, the Roman legions forced 
their way over the walls. For many days the city was given 
up to pillage. Then, by express orders from Rome, it was burned 
to the ground, and its site was plowed up, sown to salt, and 
cursed (146 b.c.). To carry out this crime fell to the lot of 
one of the purest and noblest characters Rome ever produced, 
— Publius Scipio Aemilianus, the nephew and adopted grandson 
of Scipio Africanus, known himself as Africanus the Younger. 
As he watched the smoldering ruins (they burned for seventeen 
days) with his friend Polybius the historian, Scipio spoke his 
fear that some day Rome might suffer a like fate, and he was 
heard to repeat Homer’s lines: 


COMMERCIAL GREED 181 

“Yet come it will, the day decreed by fate, 

The day when thou, Imperial Troy, must bend, 

And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.” 


II. THE WINNING OF THE EAST 

Immediately after the Second Punic War, Rome began to 
extend her authority in the Greek East and in eleven years 
(200-190 b.c.) she set up a virtual protectorate 1 over all the realms 
of Alexander’s successors . For this there was much excuse 
in the weakness and disorder of the degenerate Eastern states 
(p. 142). That vast region had become politically “an intoler¬ 
able hubbub,” from which men’s eyes turned with hope “to 
the stable and well-ordered Republic of the West.” 

But Rome did not stop with protectorates. Gradually she 
was led to seize territory in the civilized East, as before in the 
barbarous West. Appetite for power grew with its exercise; 
a class of ambitious nobles craved new wars of conquest for the 
sake of glory and power; and the growing class of merchants 
and money lenders (who now indirectly dominated the govern¬ 
ment) hungered raveningly for conquests in order to secure 
more special privileges in the form of trade monopolies and the 
management of finances in new provinces. 

Two or three features only of this long conquest can be noted 
here. 

1. The flexible legion proved incomparably superior to the 
unwieldy phalanx. 

2. Rome so filled her coffers from the plunder of the East 
that thereafter she never taxed her citizens. Besides this public 
plunder, Roman generals regularly paid their soldiers by the sack 
of helpless rich cities — one Roman hero turning over to a 
ruffian soldiery seventy civilized cities in one campaign. 

3. In 146 b.c. — the same year that saw the destruction of 
Carthage — Rome basely goaded Greece into rebellion, and 
then destroyed Corinth — another of the commercial centers 

1 That is, Rome controlled their foreign relations, and, on occasion, would 
step in to maintain internal order — much as Britain did for some years in 
Egypt. 


Rome 
changes 
protec¬ 
torates into 
provinces 



The world 

Graeco- 

Roman 


Latin West 
and Greek 
East 


182 ROME THE WORLD MISTRESS 

whose prosperity called out the envy of Roman merchants. 
The city was burned; its site plowed and cursed; and its 
people murdered or sold into slavery. The art-treasures became 
the plunder of the Roman state, but much was lost. Polybius 
saw soldiers playing at dice, amid the smoking ruins, on the 
paintings of the greatest masters. 

In 264 b.c. Rome had been one of five Great Powers (p. 174). 
In 146, she was the sole Great Power. Carthage and Mace¬ 
donia were provinces. Egypt and Syria had become protec¬ 
torates and were soon to be provinces. All the smaller states 
had been brought within the Roman “sphere of influence.” 
Rome held the heritage of Alexander as well as that of Carthage. 
The civilized world had become a Graeco-Roman world, under 
Roman sway. 

But Rome’s relations with the two sections of her empire were 
widely different. To the people of the West, despite terrible 
cruelties in war, she brought better order and higher civilization 
than they had known. The Western world became Latin. 
But to the last, the East remained Greek, not Latin, in language, 
customs, and thought. The Adriatic continued to divide the 
Latin and Greek civilizations when the two shared the world 
under the sway of Rome. 

Exercise. — Make a table of dates in parallel columns to show 
relations in time between Greek and Roman history — to 146 b.c. 

b.c. Greece b.c. Rome 

510. Expulsion of Athenian tyrants. 500(?). Expulsion of the kings. 

492. Attack by Persia. 494. First secession by the plebs: 

tribunes. 

etc. etc. 

Special Report, from library material: the story of Hannibal after 
Zama. 


CHAPTER XX 


STRIFE BETWEEN RICH AND POOR, 146-49 B.C. 

Rome had ‘won the world but lost her own soul/ During 
her warg of conquest, she sank steadily to lower levels in morals 
and in industry at home. The Second Punic War alone cost 
Italy a million lives. These included the flower of the Roman 
citizens, — tens of thousands of high-souled youth, who, in 
peace, would have served the state through a long lifetime. The 
Italian race was made permanently poorer by that terrible 
hemorrhage. 

Conquest and war had hastened, too, the growth of a capitalist 
class. By l/fi, Rome had become the money center of the world. 
The capitalists became known as equites, or “knights.” They 
formed a new and larger aristocracy of wealth, just below the 
old senatorial aristocracy of office and birth. Very commonly 
they were organized in partnerships and stock companies, 
and the Via Sacra , along which such companies had many 
offices, was the first Wall Street. Some of these combinations 
monopolized the trade in important commodities — so as unduly 
to raise the price to the public. Olive oil was a necessary part 
of Italian food, holding much more than the place that butter 
does with us, and it had many other uses aside from food; so 
about 200 b.c., we find an “ oil trust” at Rome. A few years later 
the people were so distressed by a speculators’ “corner” in 
grain that the government felt it necessary to prosecute certain 
“malefactors of great wealth” under an ancient law of the 
Twelve Tables against engrossing food. 

Ordinarily, however, the capitalists went their extortionate 
ways without rebuke. True, the Senatorial families were for¬ 
bidden by law to engage in foreign trade or in government 
contracts; but this attempt to keep the money power from 
influencing the government failed. The capitalists could not 

183 


Decline in 
morals due 
to war 


Conquest 

creates 

capitalist 

class 


Trade 

monopolies 


And their 
alliance 
with the 
Senate 



184 


DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


Wealth’s 

special 

privileges 


Wealth’s 
control of 
government 


place members of their own class in the Senate, so as directly to 
secure such policies as they desired; but none the less, indi¬ 
rectly, they did control the government. 

This condition began with the patriotic action of the moneyed 
men during the Second Punic War. Year by year, during that 
desperate struggle, the Senate had to have immense sums of 
money such as the Roman treasury had never before known. 
The only way then to get such sums quickly was from the 
rising companies of capitalists. These companies risked their 
wealth generously to build the fleets and equip the armies with 
which Hannibal was held in check. Then, in return, when the 
danger was past, they demanded and obtained special favors. 
In particular, they were allowed to take for their own the public 
lands, treating the land provision of the Licinian Laws as a 
dead letter. Sometimes they repaid themselves out of graft¬ 
ing contracts for supplies, or by overinsuring ships laden with 
army supplies, and then scuttling them, to collect the money 
from the government. Moreover the capitalists loaned money, 
perhaps without security, to ambitious young nobles to help 
them get elected to office; and in return, when one of these 
nobles became a provincial governor, he could easily induce a 
rich city to give fat contracts to his favorite Roman syndicate; 
or he could enable the syndicate to squeeze from a debtor city 
the last penny of extortionate interest which its government 
had foolishly or wrongfully promised. 

The syndicates were of no political party. Like “big busi¬ 
ness’’ in our own time, they sought to control or own every 
leader and party which might be able sometime to serve them. 
Moreover, small shares of the stock companies were widely 
distributed, so that the whole middle class of citizens was 
interested in every prospect of enlarged dividends. Such 
citizens could be counted upon to support any project of the 
moneyed interests with their votes in the Assembly and with 
their shoutings in the street mobs. 


Ever since the war with Pyrrhus, Greek culture from Magna 
Graecia had been more and more influencing Rome. With a 



PLATE XXV 



The Discus Thrower ( Discobolus ). — This glorious marble (unearthed in 
1871 amid some ruins on the Esquiline Hill, and now at the Lancelotti 
Palace in Rome) is a copy of a bronze by Myron (p. 121), probably 
celebrating some victor in the Olympic games. Quite probably this 
marble was plundered from some Greek city. 










PLATE XXVI 




Two Views of the Remains of the Library of a Roman Villa near 
Tivoli. Walls so well preserved are uncommon; but the foundations of 
such structures are scattered over Western and Southern Europe, and 
even to-day new finds of this sort are revealed by chance excavations. 








RICH AND POOR 


185 


few of the better minds, like the Scipios, this softened and refined 
character into a lovable type; but as a rule it merely ve¬ 
neered the native Roman coarseness and brutality. 

And after the conquest of the Greek East, there was a new 
inflow of Greek culture into Italy. Greek became the fashion¬ 
able language; Greek marbles and pictures, plundered from 
Greek cities, adorned Roman palaces; Greek slaves wrote plays 
to amuse Roman nobles. With the rich and the nobles, the 
old Roman simplicity gave way to sumptuous luxury. There 
was a growing display in dress, in rich draperies and couches 
and other house furnishings, in the celebration of marriages, 
at funerals, and at the table. (The Romans now adopted the 
Greek custom of reclining at meals.) As the Roman Juvenal 
wrote later : “ Luxury has fallen upon us — more terrible than 
the sword; the conquered East has avenged herself by the gift 
of her vices.” 

The houses of wealthy men had come to imitate the Greek 
type. Each fashionable house had its bathrooms, one or more, 
and its library. The pavement of the courts, and many floors, 
were ornamented with artistic mosaic. Walls were hung with 
costly, brilliantly colored tapestries; and ceilings were richly 
gilded. Sideboards were beautiful with vases and gold and 
silver plate; and in various recesses stood glorious statues, 
the booty from some Hellenic city. 

Besides his town house, each rich Roman had one or more 
country houses {villas), with all the comforts of the city, — 
baths, libraries, museums, mosaic pavements, richly gilded 
ceilings, walls hung with brilliant tapestries, — while about 
the house spread parklike grounds with ornamental shrub¬ 
bery and playing fountains and with beautiful marble forms 
gleaming through the foliage, and perhaps with fish ponds and 
vineyards. 

Commonly a villa was the center of a large farm; and its 
magnificent luxury found a sinister contrast in the squalid huts, 
leaning against the walls of the villa grounds, in which slept the 
wretched slaves that tilled the soil and heaped up wealth for 
the noble master. Near by, in somewhat better quarters, lived 


Influence of 

Greek 

culture 


Simplicity 
gives way to 
sumptuosity 


Luxury of 
the rich 


The villa 




186 


DECLINE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


Gladiatorial 

games 


The public 
baths 


The hungry 
populace 


his skilled artisans — carpenters, smiths, and bakers. To care 
for the complex needs of his sumptuous life, too, every man of 
wealth kept troops of household slaves — who slept on the floors 
of the large halls or in the open courts. 

Alongside this private luxury, there grew the 'practice among 
candidates for office of entertaining the populace with shows, 
especially with gladiatorial games. These came, not from the 
Greek East, but from neighbors in Italy. They were an old 
Etruscan custom, and were introduced into Rome about the 
beginning of the Punic Wars. A gladiatorial contest was a 
combat in which two men fought each other to the death for the 
amusement of the spectators. The practice was connected 
with ancient human sacrifices for the dead, and at Rome the 
first contests of this kind took place only at the funerals of 
nobles, but by degrees they became the most common of the 
public amusements. 

Exaggerated copies of the Greek public baths appeared in 
Rome. These became great public clubhouses, where the more 
voluptuous and idle citizens spent many hours a day. Besides 
the various rooms for baths, — hot, tepid, or cold, — a bathing 
house had its swimming pools, libraries, and museums, and 
extensive gardens with delightful shady walks. Before long, 
some of these were opened free to the poorer classes. 

For Rome now had a populace, — masses of hungry, unem¬ 
ployed men. This new class, like the new rich, was also a prod¬ 
uct of the Second Punic War. That war began the ruin of 
the small farmer in Italy. Over much of the peninsula the home¬ 
steads were hopelessly devastated; and years of continuous 
camp life, with plunder for pay, corrupted the simple habits 
of the yeoman class, so that they drifted to the city, to become 
a rabble. 

When the great wars were over, the rift between the new rich 
and the new poor went on widening. Rome confiscated vast 
tracts of land in her conquered provinces, and afterward sold 
them cheap to her own nobles; and often the ruined natives 
were glad to sell their remaining estates for a song. By such 
means, Roman nobles became the owners of huge landed 




RICH AND POOR 


187 


properties in Sicily, Spain, Africa, and soon in the East, — all 
worked by cheap slave labor, which was supplied in abundance 
by the continuous wars of conquest. This new landlord class 
then supplied the Italian cities with grain from Sicily and North 
Africa cheaper than the Italian farmer could raise it on his more 
sterile soil. 

This did not hurt the large landlord in Italy: he turned to Ruin of 
cattle grazing or sheep raising, with slave labor. But the small y^ J^nr y 
farmer had no such refuge. Ruined and dismayed, many of 
this class were ready to sell their farms; and they found eager 
purchasers in the new capitalists, who especially desired pleasure 
resorts in Italy. Indeed, when the yeoman (in the more se¬ 
cluded districts) still clung stubbornly to his ancestral fields, 
a grasping landlord neighbor sometimes had recourse to force 
and fraud. Horace, court poet though he was (pp. 225-6), 
describes in pathetic words the helplessness of the poor farmer, 
whose cattle died mysteriously, or whose growing crops were 
trampled into the ground overnight, until he would sell at 
the rich man’s price. Redress at law was usually too costly 
and too uncertain for a poor man in conflict with a rich 
one. 

In parts of Italy, especially in the north, many yeomen Emigration 
did hold their places. But over great districts, only large 
ranches could be seen, with half-savage slave herdsmen and 
their flocks, where formerly there had nestled numerous cottages 
on small, well-tilled farms, each supporting its independent 
family. As a class , the small farmers, once the backbone of 
Latin society, had disappeared. 

What became of this dispossessed yeomanry, from whom 
formerly had come conquerors, statesmen, and dictators ? 

Many had foresight and energy enough to make their way at 
once to Gaul or Spain, while their small capital lasted. To 
Italy their strength was lost. But in the semi-barbarous west¬ 
ern provinces, for a century, a steady stream of sturdy peasant 
emigrants spread the old wholesome Roman civilization and 
confirmed the Roman rule, while at the same time they built 
up homes and fortunes for themselves. 





188 


DECAY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 


A city mob 


Political 

decay 


A Senatorial 
oligarchy 


A whole class of people, however, could not leave their native 
land. The great bulk of the ex-farmers merely drifted to the 
cities of Italy, and especially to the capital. If Italy had been 
a manufacturing country, they might finally have found a new 
kind of work in these city homes. But the Roman conquests 
in the East prevented this. In the Eastern provinces, manu¬ 
facturing of all sorts was much more developed than in Italy; 
and now Roman merchants found it cheaper to import Oriental 
goods than to build up a system of factories at home. Rome 
ceased to develop home resources, and fed upon the provinces; 
and such manufactures as remained were already in the hands 
of skilled Oriental slaves or freedmen. 

Thus the ex-farmers found no more employment in the city 
than in the country. They soon spent the small sums they had 
received for their lands, and then they and their sons sank into 
a degraded city rabble. Hannibal had struck Rome a deadlier 
blow than he ever knew. The rugged citizen farmers who had 
conquered Pyrrhus were replaced, on one side, by an incapable, 
effeminate aristocracy, and on the other, by a mongrel mob 
reinforced by freed slaves. The lines of an English poet, almost 
two thousand years later, regarding similar phenomena in his 
own country, apply to this Italy: 

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay! ” 

With this moral decline came political decay. In theory the 
constitution had not changed; but really it had become a play¬ 
thing for factions of ambitious and degenerate politicians. Old 
ideas of loyalty, obedience, regard for law, self-restraint, van¬ 
ished. Leading statesmen disregarded all checks of the con¬ 
stitution, to carry a point; and young nobles flattered, caressed, 
and bribed the populace for their votes. The Senatorial order 
shrank from a broad and wise aristocracy into a narrow, selfish, 
incompetent oligarchy, careful only of its own class interests. 
The shows expected from aediles, to entertain the populace, 
had become so costly that only the wealthiest men, or the most 
reckless gamesters, could start in politics. 


PLATE XXVII 




Above. — Ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Pompeii, with a view of Ve¬ 
suvius the destroyer in the background. (Cf. Plate XXIV, facing p. 171.) 

Below.—A Court in the House of the Vettii at Pompeii. (The 
modern shrubbery reproduces something of what the open court must 
have possessed.) 
















PLATE XXVIII 



A Court of a Roman House. — From a painting by Boulanger. 



















CLASS DIVISIONS 


189 


So, too, there was a sharper line than formerly, through all 
Italy , between citizens and subjects. Rome ceased to take in 
new bodies of citizens : she no longer sent out Latin colonies— 
since the ruling class in Rome wished all vacant lands for 
themselves; and her “Allies,” whose loyal friendship had 
saved her from Hannibal, she began to treat as subjects. 
She gave them a smaller share of the plunder of war than for¬ 
merly, and doubled their share of men for the army, while 
Roman officials sometimes displayed toward them a new inso¬ 
lence and a brutal cruelty. In one town the city consul was 
stripped and scourged because the peevish wife of a Roman 
magistrate felt aggrieved that the public baths were not vacated 
for her use quickly enough. 

Worse still was the distinction between Italy and the provinces. 
“ Italy was to rule and feast: the provinces were to obey and 
pay.” 

The Roman province dates from the conquests of the First 
Punic War. The islands then acquired were “beyond seas,” 
and seemed to Rome too distant or too foreign to permit the 
extension to them of her liberal policy (at that time) toward 
subject communities in Italy. And Rome failed at this point 
to invent a new and needed form of government. The constitution 
of a city-state she had expanded and adapted with wonderful 
skill to the needs of a united Italy, but for conquests beyond 
Italy that scheme broke down. All the conquests after the 
war with Pyrrhus were called provinces, and were ruled essen¬ 
tially upon the model of the two or three little prefectures 
in Italy — the worst type of government Rome had used. 
To be sure, the Roman administration at first was more honest 
and capable than Carthaginian or Greek. But irresponsible 
power bred recklessness and corruption. 

The special marks of a province were: payment of taxes 
in money or grain; and the absolute rule of a Roman 
governor. 

The Senate fixed at will the amount that each province 
must pay. Then it “ farmed out ” the collection of this revenue, 
at public auction, usually to some company of Roman capital- 


Growing 
distinction 
between 
citizens and 
subjects 


And 

between 
Italy and 
the prov¬ 
inces 


Marks of a 
province 


Taxes 

farmed 






190 


DECAY OF THE HOMAN EMPIRE 


Despotic 

governors 


No redress 
for pro¬ 
vincials 


A four-fold 
class strife 


ists. The “contractor” paid down a lump sum, and had for 
himself all that he could squeeze from the province above that 
amount. This arrangement constantly tempted the contractor 
to extortion, and encouraged his agents in theft — all at the 
expense of the helpless provincials. If a contractor seized 
twice the intended amount, it would afterwards be almost 
impossible to prove the fact — especially when the only judge 
was the Roman governor who perhaps received part of the 
plunder. The whole corrupt and tyrannical system was like 
that by which Turkey in our day has ground down her Christian 
provinces. 

Everything tended to make the governor a tyrant. He 
had soldiers to back up any command. There was no appeal 
from his decrees, and no tribune to veto his acts. Even the 
persons of the provincials were at his mercy. 1 He was appointed 
by the Senate from those nobles who had just held consulships 
or praetorships ; and commonly he had expected to get a province 
to plunder, in order to repay himself, or his creditors, for earlier 
outlay in getting office. 

True, a governor might be brought to trial; but only after 
his term had expired; and only at Rome, and before the Senate — 
whose members were interested in passing around such chances 
for exploitation among their order. Poor provincials, of 
course, had to endure any abuse without even seeking re¬ 
dress; and in any case it was rarely possible to secure con¬ 
viction even of the grossest offenders. When a certain Verres 
was given the province of Sicily for three years, Cicero tells 
us, he cynically declared it quite enough: “ In the first year he 
could secure plunder for himself; in the second for his friends; 
in the third for his judges.” 

This new period of class struggle was to last nearly a century, 
and to end only with the coming of the Caesars — a common 
master. The strife was three-fold : in Rome, between rich and 

1 In Cisalpine Gaul a Roman governor beheaded a noble Gaul, a fugitive 
guest in his camp, just to gratify with the sight a worthless favorite who was 
lamenting that he had missed the gladiatorial games at Rome (Davis’ Read¬ 
ings , II, No. 37). 



THE PROVINCES 


191 


poor; in Italy, between Rome and the “ Allies”; in the Roman 
world, between Italy and the provinces. 

Everywhere, too, there was possible strife between masters Roman 
and slaves. In the closing period of the Roman Republic, slaver y 
there grew up a slavery beyond all parallel in extent and in 
horror. Says one leading authority, “In comparison with its 
abyss of suffering, all Negro slavery [has been] but a drop in 
the ocean.” Slaves were made cheap by the wars of conquest. 

Later, to keep up the cheap supply, man hunts were organized 
regularly on the frontiers, and kidnappers even desolated some 
of the provinces. At the famous slave market in Delos ten 
thousand slaves were once sold in a day. Cato (p. 180), the 
model Roman, advised his countrymen to work slaves like 
cattle, selling off the old and infirm. “The slave,” he said, 
“should be always working or sleeping.” Naturally, the 
Roman world was troubled by many terrible slave revolts. 






CHAPTER XXI 


THE GRACCHI, 133-121 B.C. 


Tiberius 

Gracchus 


His pro¬ 
posals for 
land re¬ 
form 


The evils described in the last chapter had not come upon 
Rome without being seen by many thoughtful men, and with¬ 
out some efforts at reform. But the older statesmen were too 
selfish, too narrow, or too timid; and the great attempt at 
reform fell to two youths, the Gracchi brothers, throbbing 
with noble enthusiasm and with the fire of genius. 

Tiberius Gracchus was still under thirty at his death. He 
was one of the brilliant circle of young Romans about Scipio. 
His father had been a magnificent aristocrat. His mother, 
Cornelia, a daughter of the elder Africanus, is as famous for her 
fine culture and noble nature as for being the “Mother of the 
Gracchi.” Tiberius himself was early distinguished in war, and 
marked by his uprightness and energy. This was the first man 
to strike at the root of the industrial, moral, and political decay of 
Italy, hy trying to rebuild the yeoman class. He obtained the 
tribuneship for the year 133, and at once brought forward an 
agrarian 1 law (the obsolete land clause of the Licinian law in 
a gentler but more effective form): 

1. Each holder of public land was to surrender all that he 
held in excess of the legal limit, receiving in return absolute title 
to the three hundred acres left him. (This was generous treat¬ 
ment and neither confiscation nor demagogism. It was further 
provided that an old holder might keep about 160 acres more 
for each of his sons.) 

2. The land reclaimed was to be given in small holdings 
(some eighteen acres each) to poor applicants, so as to re-create 
a yeomanry. And to make the reform lasting, these holders 
and their descendants were to possess their land without right 

1 Agrarian refers to land, especially farm land; from the Latin ager. 
Opponents of reform very commonly refer contemptuously to any attempt 
at social betterment as “agrarianism.” 

192 





























» * 



- 




















A Roman Holiday, with Procession 












CLASS GREED — THE GRACCHI 


193 


to sell. In return, they were to pay a small rent to the state. 
(This is somewhat like certain land projects which have been 
advocated in Britain in recent years with a view to relieving 
congestion in the towns and reviving rural life.) 

3, To provide for changes, and to keep the law from being 
neglected, there was to be a 'permanent board of three commis¬ 
sioners to superintend the reclaiming and distributing of land. 

Gracchus urged his law with fiery eloquence : “ The wild beasts 
of Italy have their dens, but the brave men who spill their 
blood for her are without homes or settled habitations. The 
private soldiers fight and die to advance the luxury of the 
great, and they are called masters of the world without having 
a sod to call their own.” The Senate of course opposed the pro¬ 
posal as “ confiscation.” Tiberius brought the question directly 
before the tribes, as he had the right to do ; and the town tribes, 
and all the small farmers left in the rural tribes, rallied enthusi¬ 
astically to his support. The Senate put up one of the other 
tribunes, Octavius, to forbid a vote. After many pleadings, 
Tiberius resorted to a revolutionary measure. In spite of his 
colleague’s veto, he put to the Assembly the question whether 
he or Octavius should be deposed ; and when the vote was given 
unanimously against Octavius, Tiberius had him dragged from 
his seat. Then the great law was passed. 

Tiberius next proposed to extend Roman citizenship to all 
Italy. The Senate fell back upon an ancient cry: it accused 
him of trying to make himself king, and threatened to try 
him at the end of his term. To complete his work, and to 
save himself, Gracchus asked for reflection. The first two 
tribes voted for him, and then the Senate, having failed in other 
methods, declared his candidacy illegal. Tiberius saw that 
he was lost. He put on mourning and asked the people only 
to protect his infant son. It was harvest time, and the farmers 
were absent from the Assembly, which was left largely to the 
worthless city rabble. The more violent of the Senators and 
their friends, charging the undecided mob, put it to flight and 
murdered Gracchus — a patriot-martyr worthy of the company 
of the Cassius, Manlius, and Maelius of earlier days. Some 


The struggle 


Tiberius 
seeks to 
take the 
Allies into 
the state 


Tiberius 
murdered 
by the aris¬ 
tocrats 



His work 
lived for a 
while 


Aristocratic 

reaction 


Caius 

Gracchus 


Caius 

provides 

allies 


194 DECLINE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 

three hundred of his adherents also were killed and thrown 
into the Tiber. Rome, in all her centuries of stern, sober, patient 
constitutional strife, had never witnessed such a day before. 

The Senate declared the murder an act of patriotism, and 
followed up the reformer’s partisans with mock trials and perse¬ 
cutions, fastening one of them, says Plutarch, in a chest with 
vipers., But the work of Tiberius lived on. The Senate did 
not dare to interfere with the great law that had been carried. 
A consul for the year 132 inscribed on a monument, that he was 
the first who had installed farmers in place of shepherds on the 
public domains. The land commission (composed of the friends 
of Tiberius) continued its work zealously, and in 125 b.c. the 
citizen list of Rome had increased by eighty thousand farmers. 

This “back to the land” movement was a vast and healthful 
reform. If it could have been kept up vigorously, it might 
have turned the dangerous rabble into sturdy husbandmen, 
and so removed Rome’s chief danger. But of course to re¬ 
claim so much land from old holders led to many bitter dis¬ 
putes as to titles; and, after a few years, the Senate took ad¬ 
vantage of this fact to abolish the commission. 

Immediately after this reaction, Caius Gracchus took up the 
work. He had been a youth when Tiberius was assassinated. 
Now he was Rome’s greatest orator, — a dauntless, resolute, 
clear-sighted man, long brooding on personal revenge and on pa¬ 
triotic reform. Tiberius, he declared, appeared to him in a 
dream to call him to his task: “Why do you hesitate? You 
cannot escape your doom and mine — to live for the people 
and to die for them! ” A recently discovered letter from Cor¬ 
nelia indicates, too, that his mother urged him on. 

First Gracchus sought to win political allies. He gained 
the favor of the equites by getting them the control of the law 
courts (in place of the former senatorial control); and the city 
mob he secured by a corn law providing for the sale of grain to 
the poor in the capital at half the regular market price — the 
other half to be made up from the public treasury. This 
measure undoubtedly had a vicious side, and aristocratic writers 



CLASS STRIFE —THE GRACCHI 


195 


have made the most of it. Perhaps Caiiis regarded it as a 
necessary poor-law, and as compensation for the public lands 
that still remained in the hands of the wealthy. It did not 
pauperize the poor, because such distributions by private 
patrons, especially by office-seekers, were already customary 
on a vast scale: it simply took this charity into the hands of 
the state and if Gracchus’ other measures could have been car¬ 
ried through, the need for such temporary charity would have 
been removed. 

Caius then entered upon the work of reform. The land com¬ 
mission was reestablished, and its work was extended to the 
founding of Roman colonies in distant parts of Italy. Still more 
important, — Caius introduced the plan of Roman colonization out¬ 
side Italy. He sent six thousand colonists from Rome and other 
Italian towns to the waste site of Carthage, and planned other 
such foundations. If this statesmanlike measure had been 
allowed to work, it would not only have provided for the land¬ 
less poor of Italy: it would also have Romanized the provinces 
rapidly, and would have broken down the unhappy distinctions 
between them and Italy. (The colonists kept full citizenship.) 

Caius also pressed earnestly for political reform outside the 
city. He proposed, wisely and nobly, to confer full citizenship 
upon the Latins, and Latin rights upon all Italy. But the 
tribes, jealous of any extension of their privileges to others, were 
quite ready to desert him on these matters. The “knights” 
and the merchants, too, had grown hostile, because they hated 
to see commercial rivals like Corinth and Carthage rebuilt. 

The Senate seized its chance. It set on another tribune, 
Drusus, to outbid Caius by promises never meant to be kept. 
Drusus proposed to found twelve large colonies at once in Italy 
and to do away with the small rent paid by the new peasantry. 
There was no land for these colonies, but the mob thoughtlessly 
followed the treacherous demagogue and abandoned its true 
leader. When Gracchus stood for a third election he was de¬ 
feated. 

Now that he was no longer protected by the sanctity of the 
tribuneship, the nobles, headed by the consul (a ferocious 


Economic 

reform 


Roman 

colonies 

abroad 


Attempt to 
extend 
citizenship 
to the Allies 


Defeat and 
murder 





196 DECLINE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


Work of 
the Gracchi 
undone 


personal enemy), were bent upon his ruin. The chance was 
soon found. The Senate tried to repeal the law for the colony 
at Carthage. This attempt caused many of the old supporters 
of Caius to come into the Assembly from the country. Re¬ 
membering the fate of Tiberius, some of them came in arms. 
The nobles cried out that this meant a conspiracy to overthrow 
the government. The consul called the senatorial party to 
arms and offered for the head of Gracchus its weight in gold 
(the first instance of head money in Roman civil strife). A bloody 
battle followed in the streets. Gracchus, taking no part in the 
conflict himself, was slain. Three thousand of his adherents 
were afterward strangled in prison. 

The victorious Senate struck hard. It resumed its sovereign 
rule. The proposed colonies were abandoned; then the great 
land reform itself was undone: the peasants were permitted to 
sell their land, and the commission was abolished. The old 
economic decay began again, and soon the work of the Gracchi 
was but a memory. 

Even that memory the Senate tried to erase. Men were 
forbidden to speak of the brothers, and Cornelia was not allowed 
to wear mourning for her sons. One lesson, however, had 
been taught. The Senate had drawn the sword. When next 
a great reformer should take up the work of the Gracchi, he 
would come as a military master, to sweep away the wretched 
oligarchy with the sword, or to receive its cringing submission. 



CHAPTER XXII 


THE SENATE AND MILITARY CHIEFS 

I. MARIUS AND SULLA, 106-78 b.c. 

The corrupt Senate had proved able to save its own unjust 
privileges by throttling reform, but it had grown glaringly 
incompetent to guard the Roman world against outside foes. 
Rome had left no other state able to keep the seas from pirates 
or to protect the frontiers of the civilized world against barba¬ 
rians. It was her plain duty therefore to police the Mediterra¬ 
nean lands herself. But even while she was murdering the fol¬ 
lowers of the Gracchi, the seas were swarming again with pirate 
fleets, and new barbarian thunderclouds were gathering un¬ 
watched along her borders. This was another reason why the 
Roman world was ready for a military master. 

The first great storm broke upon the northern frontier. 
The Cirnbri and Teutones, two German peoples, migrating 
slowly with families, flocks, and goods, in search of new homes, 
reached the passes of the Alps in the year 113. These new bar¬ 
barians were huge, flaxen-haired, with fierce blue eyes, and they 
terrified the smaller Italians by their size, their terrific shouts, 
and their savage customs. They defeated five Roman armies 
in swift succession (the last with slaughter that recalled the 
day of Cannae), ravaged Gaul and Spain at will for some 
years, and finally threatened Italy itself. At the same time a 
dangerous Slave War had broken out in Sicily. 

Rome found a general none too soon. Marius (a rude soldier, 
son of a Volscian day-laborer) had just before risen from the 
ranks to chief command in a critical war against African bar¬ 
barians. In defiance of the law and against the wish of the 
Senate, the Assembly reelected him consul in his absence — 
and repeated this action each year for the next four years. 
While the Germans gave him time, Marius reformed and drilled 

197 


Incom¬ 
petence of 
the Senate 
— except to 
save its 
privileges 


The first 
German 
invasion 


Marius 
saves Rome 




198 


FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


Marius’ 
failure as a 
reformer 


The “ Social 
War”: Sulla 


All Italy 
enters the 
Roman 
state 


The peril 
from Mith- 
ridates in 
the East 


his army. Then, in the summer of 102, at Aquae Sextiae (Aix) 
in southern Gaul he annihilated the two hundred thousand 
warriors of the Teutones, with all their women and children, 
in a huge massacre (Davis’ Readings, II, No. 41). The next 
summer he destroyed in like manner the vast horde of the Cimbri, 
who had penetrated to the Po. The first German nation to 
attack Rome had won graves in her soil. 

Marius might now have made himself king; or, better, had 
he been enough of a statesman, he might have used his power 
to reform the Republic. He was naturally the champion of the 
democrats; but he looked on (undecided, and incapable except 
in the field) while the Senatorial party massacred the reviving 
democratic party once more in a street war — and so he lost his 
chance. 

Soon another war brought to the front another great general. 
In the year 91, the tribune Drusus, son of the Drusus who had 
opposed the Gracchi, took up the Gracchi’s work and proposed 
to extend citizenship to the Italians. The nobles murdered 
him, and carried a law threatening death to any one who should 
renew the proposal. Then the Italians rose in arms. Once 
more Rome fought for life, surrounded by a ring of foes. This 
Social War (war with the Socii, or “Allies”) was as dangerous 
a contest as the imperial city ever waged (91-88 B.c.). Two 
things saved her. She divided her foes by granting citizenship 
to all who would at once lay down their arms; and the aris¬ 
tocratic consul, Sulla, showed magnificent generalship. 

The “Allies” were crushed, but their cause was victorious. 
When the war was over, Rome gradually incorporated into the 
Roman state all Italy south of the Po, making all Italian cities 
municipia and raising the number of citizens from 400,000 to 
900,000. 

For thirty years the Senate had looked on indolently while 
danger gathered head in Asia. Finally the storm had burst. 
Pontus, Armenia, and Parthia had grown into independent 
kingdoms, each of them, for long time past, encroaching upon 


MILITARY CHIEFS: POMPEY AND CAESAR 199 


Home’s territory. At last, Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, 
suddenly seized the Roman province of Asia Minor, then called 
the “ Province of Asia.” The people hailed him as a deliverer, 
and joined him enthusiastically to secure freedom from the 
hated extortion of Roman tax-collectors and money-lenders. 
Eighty thousand Italians, scattered through the province, — 
men, women, and children, — were massacred, almost in a day, 
by the city mobs. Then Mithridates turned to Macedonia 
and Greece. Here, too, the people joined him against Rome. 
Athens welcomed him as a savior from Roman tyranny; and 
twenty thousand more Italians were massacred in Greece 
and in the Aegean islands. Rome’s dominion in the Eastern 
world had crumbled. 

This news merely intensified anarchy in Rome. The Senate 
declared war on Mithridates and gave the command to Sulla. 
The Assembly insisted that Marius should have charge. Then 
followed savage civil war with regular armies, and with bloody 
massacre after massacre in the streets of the capital. After 
various ups and downs, Marius died in an orgy of triumph. 
And then, on his return from victory in the East, Sulla ruled 
for years with the title of 'permanent dictator (81-78 b.c.), 
stamping out the embers of democracy by systematic and long- 
continued assassination. Finally, when he thought Senatorial 
rule safely reestablished, he abdicated his monarchy — and 
died in peace, in debauchery. 

II. POMPEY AND CAESAR, 78-49 b.c. 

Sulla’s death left one of his officers, Pompey, the leading man 
at Rome — a fair soldier, but otherwise of mediocre ability, 
vain, sluggish, and cautious. Pompey now forced or persuaded 
the Senate to send him with an overwhelming army to put down 
a long-standing rebellion in Spain — where he succeeded after 
the democratic general of the rebels (Sertorius) had been assassi¬ 
nated. In his absence, came a terrible slave revolt in Italy, 
headed by the gallant Spartacus. Spartacus was a Thracian 
captive who had been forced to become a gladiator. With a 
few companions he escaped from the gladiatorial school at 


Civil 

war 


Sulla’s 

dictatorship 


Pompey in 
Spain 


And 

Spartacus 


200 


FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


Pompey and 
the pirates 


Pompey in 
the East 


“ Pompey 
the Great” 


Capua and fled to the mountains. There he was joined by- 
other fugitive slaves until he was at the head of an army of 
70,000 men. For three years he kept the field, and repeatedly 
threatened Rome itself. Just as Pompey returned to Italy, 
however, in 70 b.c., Spartacus’ forces were crushed by Crassus, 
another of Sulla’s old lieutenants; but Pompey arrived in time 
to cut to pieces a few thousand fugitives and to claim a share 
of the credit. 

And in 67, military danger called Pompey again to the front. 
The navy of Rome had fallen to utter decay, and swarms of 
pirates terrorized the seas, setting up a formidable state on 
the rocky coasts of Cilicia and negotiating with kings as equals. 
They paralyzed trade along the great Mediterranean highway, 
and even ravaged the coasts of Italy. Finally they threatened 
Rome itself with starvation by cutting off the grain fleets. 
To put down these plunderers Pompey was given supreme 
command for three years in the Mediterranean and in all its 
coasts for fifty miles inland. He received also unlimited author¬ 
ity over all the resources of the realm. Assembling vast fleets, 
he swept the seas in a three months * campaign. 

Then Pompey’s command was extended indefinitely in 
order that he might carry on another war against Mithridates 
of Pontus, who for several years had again been threatening 
Roman power in Asia Minor. He was absent on this mission 
five years — a glorious period in his career, and one that proved 
the resources and energies of the commonwealth unexhausted, 
if only a respectable leader were found to direct them. He 
waged successful wars, crushed dangerous rebellions, conquered 
Pontus and Armenia, annexed wide provinces and extended 
the Roman bounds to the Euphrates, and restored order through¬ 
out the East. When he returned to Italy, in 62, he was “ Pompey 
the Great,” the leading figure in the world. The crown was 
within his grasp; but he let it slip, expecting it to be thrust 
upon him. 

And now a democratic leader had risen to prominence. Caius 
Julius Caesar, of an old patrician family, had defied Sulla 
with quiet dignity when ordered to divorce his wife (daughter 



PLATE XXIX 




A Roman Chariot Race. —From a modern painting. 

































PLATE XXX 




Above.—The Roman Forum To-day. — This view looks southward from 
the direction of the Capitoline (p. 151), toward the eastern edge of the 
Palatine. The group of columns in the foreground belonged to a Temple 
of Saturn, which was also the Roman Treasury. The rows of bases of 
pillars, on the right, belonged to a splendid basilica, or judgment hall, 
built by Julius Caesar. South of the Temple of Saturn, and to the left of 
Caesar’s basilica, lay the open market place. 

Below- — Roman Forum To-day, looking toward the Capitoline. Note 
the triumphal arch on the right (Arch of Titus; cf. Plate XXXIII). 









MILITARY CHIEFS: POMPEY AND CAESAR 201 


of a leading enemy of Sulla) — though Pompey had obeyed a 
like command. Barely escaping the massacres (still a boy in 
years), he had fled into hiding in the mountains during Sulla’s 
rule. During Pompey’s absence, he had served in various pub¬ 
lic offices, and had striven earnestly to reorganize the crushed 
democratic party. In 64 B.C., by a daring stroke, he set up 
again at the Capitol the trophies of Marius, which Sulla had 
torn down. 

The return of Pompey seemed to close Caesar’s career; The “First 
but the jealous and stupid Senate refused to give Pompey’s ^*te” 
soldiers the lands he had promised them for pay, and delayed 
even to ratify his wise political arrangements in the East. 

He had disbanded his army, and for two years he fretted in 
vain. Caesar seized the chance and formed a coalition between 
Pompey, Crassus, and himself. This alliance is sometimes 
called the “First Triumvirate.” Caesar furnished the brains 
and obtained the fruits. He became consul (59 b.c.) and set 
about securing Pompey’s measures. The Senate refused even 
to consider them. Caesar laid them directly before the Assem¬ 
bly. A tribune, of the Senate’s party, interposed his veto. 

Caesar looked on calmly while a mob of Pompey’s veterans 
drove the tribune from the Assembly. To delay proceedings, 
the other consul then announced that he would consult the 
omens. According to law, all action should have ceased until 
the result was known; but Caesar serenely disregarded this 
antiquated check, and carried the measures. 

At the close of his consulship, Caesar secured command of Caesar in 
the Gallic provinces for five years as proconsul. For the next Gaul 
ten years he abandoned Italy for the supreme work that opened 
to him beyond the Alps. He found the Province 1 threatened 
by two great invasions: the whole people of the Helvetii were 
migrating from their Alpine homes in search of more fertile 
lands; and a great German nation, under the king Ariovistus, 
was already encamped in Gaul. The Gauls themselves were 
distracted by feuds and grievously oppressed by their dis- 

1 In 121 the southern part of Transalpine Gaul had been given the form 
of a province. It was commonly known as The Province (modern Provence). 



202 


FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 


And the 
results 


Caesar and 
Pompey 


Senate 

adopts 

Pompey 


orderly chieftains. Caesar levied armies hastily, and in one sum¬ 
mer drove back the Helvetii and annihilated the German in¬ 
vaders. Then he seized upon the Rhine as the proper Roman 
frontier, and, in a series of masterly campaigns, he made all 
Gaul Roman, extending his expeditions even into Britain. 
Whatever we think of the morality of these conquests, they 
were to produce infinite good for mankind. Their justifica¬ 
tion rests upon much the same basis as does the White occupa¬ 
tion of America. Says John Fiske (an American historian) : 
“We ought to be thankful to Caesar every day that we live.” 

The result of the Gallic campaigns was two-fold. 

1. The wave of German invasion was again checked, until 
Roman civilization had time to do its work and to prepare 
the way for the coming Christian church. “Let the Alps 
now sink,” exclaimed Cicero; “ the gods raised them to shelter 
Italy from the barbarians, but they are no longer needed.” 

2. A wider home for Roman civilization was won among 
fresh populations, unexhausted and vigorous. The map widened 
from the Mediterranean circle to include the shores of the North 
and Baltic seas. The land that Caesar made Roman (modern 
France) was, next to Greece and Italy, to be the chief teacher 
of Europe. 

The close of Caesar’s five years in Gaul saw him easily su¬ 
perior to his colleagues, and able to seize power at Rome if he 
chose. But it was never his way to leave the work in hand 
unfinished. He renewed the “triumvirate” in 55 b.c., secur¬ 
ing the Gauls for five years more for himself, giving Spain to 
Pompey, and Asia to Crassus. 

Crassus soon perished in battle against the Parthians in the 
East. Then it became plain that the question whether Caesar 
or Pompey was to rule at Rome could not long be postponed. 
The Senate was growing frantic with fear of Caesar’s victorious 
legions. Pompey, jealous of his more brilliant rival, drew 
nearer to the Senate again, and that terrified body adopted 
him eagerly as its champion, hoping that it had found another 
Sulla to check this new Marius. Pompey was made sole con- 


JULIUS CAESAR 


203 


sul with supreme command in Italy, and at the same time 
his indefinite 'proconsular powers abroad were continued to 
him. 

Caesar’s office as proconsul was about to expire. He still 
shrank from civil war. He meant to secure the consulship for 
the next year and, in that case, he hoped to carry out reforms 
at Rome without violence. But his offers of conciliation and 
compromise were rebuffed by Pompey and the Senate. To 
stand for consul, under the law, Caesar must disband his army 
and come to Rome in person. There would be an interval 
of some months when he would be a private citizen. The 
aristocrats boasted openly that in this helpless interval they 
would destroy him as they had the Gracchi. Caesar offered 
to lay down his command and disband his troops, if Pompey 
were ordered to do the same. Instead, the aristocrats carried 
a decree that Caesar must disband his troops before a certain 
day or be declared a public enemy. Two tribunes vetoed the 
decree, but were mobbed, and barely escaped to Caesar’s 
camp in Cisalpine Gaul. 

At last the Senate had made Caesar choose between civil 
war and ruin both for himself and for all his hopes for the 
Roman world. He had made no preparation for war. Only 
one of his eleven legions was with him in Cisalpine Gaul; the 
others were dispersed in distant garrisons far beyond the Alps. 
But within an hour after the arrival of the fugitives, he was on 
the march with only his 5000 men. The same night he crossed 
the Rubicon — the little stream that separated his province 
from “ Italy.” This act was war: a proconsul was strictly 
forbidden by law to bring an army into Italy. Caesar paused 
a few moments, it is said, for the last time, when he reached the 
bank of the river at the head of his troops; then he spurred 
forward, exclaiming, “ The die is cast.” 


And forces 
Caesar to 
choose civil 
war or ruin 


Caesar 
crosses the 
Rubicon 






Pharsalus 


“ I came, 

I saw, I con¬ 
quered ” 


PAET V— THE EOMAN EMPIEE 


Rome was the whole world, and all the world was Rome. 

— Spenser, Ruins of Rome. 


CHAPTER XXIII 
FOUNDING THE EMPIRE, 49-31 B.C. 

With audacious rapidity Caesar led his one legion directly 
upon the much larger forces that ponderous Pompey was 
mustering; and in sixty days, almost without bloodshed, he was 
master of the peninsula. 

Following Pompey to Greece, he became master of the world 
by a battle at Pharsalus the next spring. Caesar’s little army 
had been living for weeks on roots and bark of trees, and it 
numbered less than half Pompey’s well-provided troops. Pom¬ 
pey, too, had his choice of positions, and he had never been 
beaten in the field. But despite his career of unbroken success, 
Pompey was “formed for a corporal,” while Caesar, though 
caring not at all for mere military glory, was one of the great¬ 
est captains of all time. And says an English historian: 

“The one host was composed in great part of a motley crowd from 
Greece and the East . . . the other was chiefly drawn from the Gallic 
populations of Italy and the West, fresh, vigorous, intelligent, and 
united in devotion and loyalty to their leader. . . . With Caesar was 
the spirit of the future; and his victory marks the moment when hu¬ 
manity could once more start hopefully upon a new line of progress.” 

Other wars took precious time. Egypt and Asia Minor each 
required a campaign. In Egypt, with the voluptuous queen, 
Cleopatra, Caesar wasted a few months; but he atoned for this 
delay by swift prosecution of the war in Asia against the son 
of Mithridates. This was the campaign that Caesar reported 
rather boastfully to his lieutenants in Rome, — “I came, I 
saw, I conquered.” 


204 







JULIUS CAESAR’S FIVE YEARS 


205 


Caesar ’s first constructive work was to reconcile Italy to his 
government. He maintained strict order, guarded property 
carefully, and punished no political opponent who laid down 
arms. Only one of his soldiers had refused to follow him when 
he decided upon civil war. Caesar sent all this officer’s prop¬ 
erty after him to Pompey’s camp, and continued that policy 
toward the nobles who left Italy to join Pompey. On the field 
of victory, he called to his vengeful soldiers to remember that 
the enemy were their fellow-citizens; and after Pharsalus, he 
employed in the public service any Roman of ability, without 
regard to the side he had fought on. This clemency brought 
its proper fruit. Almost at once all classes, except a few aris¬ 
tocratic extremists, became heartily reconciled to his rule. 

From the time of the Gracchi, Rome had been moving toward 
monarchy. Owing to the corruption of the populace in the capital, 
and to the incompetent greed of the oligarchs, the tremendous 
power of the tribune had grown occasionally into a virtual 
dictatorship, as with Caius Gracchus. Owing to the growing 
military danger on the frontiers, the mighty authority of a pro- 
consul of a single province was sometimes extended, by special 
decrees, over vaster areas for indefinite time, as with Marius, 
Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar. To make a monarch needed but 
to unite these two powers, at home and abroad, in one person. 

This was what Caesar did. He preserved the old Republi¬ 
can forms. The Senate debated, and the Assembly elected 
aediles, consuls, and praetors as before. But Caesar received 
“the tribunician power” for life, and the title of Imperator 
for himself and his descendants. This term, from which we get 
our word “Emperor,” had meant simply supreme general, and 
had been used only of the master of legions in the field abroad. 
Probably Caesar would have liked the title of king, since the 
recognized authority that went with it would have helped him 
to keep order. But he found that name still hateful to the 
people; and so he adopted Imperator for his title as monarch. 


Caesar 

reconciles 

Italy 


Caesar’s 
monarchy 
the result 
of long¬ 
standing 
conditions 


The corruption of the populace and the incapacity of the 
greedy oligarchy, we Rave said, made monarchy inevitable. 





Caesar the 
champion 
of the op¬ 
pressed pro¬ 
vincial world 


206 FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE 



A third condition — the Senatorial misgovernment of the prov¬ 
inces— made Caesar's monarchy a boon to the great Roman 
world outside Italy. 

Indeed Caesar rose to power as the champion of suffering 
subject populations. Already, as proconsul, on his own author¬ 
ity, he had admitted the Cisalpine Gauls to all the privileges 
of Roman citizens. In his most arduous campaigns, he had 

kept up correspondence 
with leading provincials in 
other parts of the Empire. 
Other Roman conquerors 
had spent part of their 
plunder of the provinces 
in adorning Rome with 
public buildings: Caesar 
had expended vast sums 
in adorning and improv¬ 
ing 'provincial cities, not 
only in his own districts 
of Gaul and Spain, but 
also in Asia and Greece. 
All previous Roman ar¬ 
mies had been made up of 
Italians : Caesar’s army 
was drawn from Cisalpine 
Gaul, and indeed partly 
from Gaul beyond the Alps. Many of the subject peoples had 
begun to look to him as their best hope against Senatorial 
rapacity; and the great body of them wished for monarchy as 
an escape from anarchy and oligarchic misrule. (To call Caesar’s 
monarchy a solution for the problems of his day is not to call 
monarchy good at all times. A despotism can get along with less 
virtue and intelligence than a free government can. The Roman 
world was not good enough or wise enough for free government; 
and indeed it seemed on the verge of ruin. The despotism of 
the Caesars was a poison — but a strong medicine which pre¬ 
served that world for five precious centuries.) 


Julius Caesar. — We are not sure, how¬ 
ever, that any of the so-called “busts of 
Caesar” are really authentic. 




JULIUS CAESAR’S FIVE YEARS 


207 


Caesar at once made over the system of provincial govern¬ 
ment. The old governors had been irresponsible tyrants, with 
every temptation to plunder. Under Caesar they began to be 
trained servants of a stern master who looked to the welfare of 
the whole Empire. Their authority was lessened, and they were 
surrounded by a system of checks in the presence of other offi¬ 
cials dependent directly upon the Imperator. 

Caesar’s plans were broader than this. He meant to put the 
provinces upon an equality with Italy, and to mold the dis¬ 
tracted Roman world into one mighty whole under equal laws. 
Something he accomplished in the brief time left him. He 
incorporated all Cisalpine Gaul in Italy, and multiplied Roman 
citizenship by adding whole communities in Gaul beyond the 
Alps, in Spain, and elsewhere. Leading Gauls, too, were ad¬ 
mitted to the Senate, whose membership Caesar raised to 900, 
meaning to make it represent the whole Empire. 

Rome and Italy were not neglected. A commission, like 
that of the Gracchi, was put at work to reclaim and allot public 
lands. Landlords were required to employ at least one free 
laborer for every two slaves. Italian colonization in the prov¬ 
inces was pressed vigorously. In his early consulship (59 bx.), 
Caesar had refounded Capua; now he did the like for Carthage 
and Corinth, and these noble capitals, which had been crim¬ 
inally destroyed by the narrow jealousy of the Roman mer¬ 
chants, rose again to wealth and power. Eighty thousand 
landless citizens of Rome were provided for beyond seas; and 
by these and other means the helpless poor in the capital, 
dependent upon free grain, were reduced from 320,000 to 150,000. 

Soon after the time of the Gracchi, it became necessary to 
extend the practice of selling cheap grain to distributing free 
grain, at state expense, to the populace of the capital. This 
became one of the chief duties of the government. To have 
omitted it would have meant starvation and a horrible insur¬ 
rection. For centuries to come, the degraded populace was 
ready to support any political adventurer who seemed willing 
and able to satisfy lavishly its cry for “bread and games.” 
To have attacked the growing evil so boldly is one of Caesar’s 


Caesar 
reforms the 
provincial 
system 


And extends 

Roman 

citizenship 

outside 

Italy 


Renewal of 
the work of 
the Gracchi 
for Italy 





208 


FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE 



chief titles to honor. With a longer life, no doubt he would 
have lessened it still further. His successors soon abandoned 
the task. 

Rigid economy was introduced into all branches of the govern¬ 
ment. A bankrupt law released all debtors from further claims, 
if they surrendered their property to their creditors, and so 


Theatek at Pompeii. — Every Roman city had its amphitheater (two theaters 
back to back) for shows and gladiatorial games- Cf. illustrations after 
pp. 228, 232. 

the demoralized Italian society was given a fresh start. Tax¬ 
ation was equalized and reduced. A comprehensive census 
was taken for all Italy, and measures were under way to extend 
it over the Empire. Caesar also began the codification of the 
irregular mass of Roman law, created a great 'public library, 
rebuilt the Forum, began vast public works in all parts of the 
Empire, and reformed the coinage and the calendar . 1 

1 The Roman calendar had been inferior to the Egyptian and had got 
three months out of the way, so that the spring equinox came in June. 
To correct the error, Caesar made the year 46 (“the last year of confusion”) 
consist of four hundred and forty-five days, and for the future, instituted 
the system of leap years, as we have it, except for a slight correction by 
Pope Gregory in the sixteenth century. 







JULIUS CAESAR’S FIVE YEARS 


209 


Caesar was still in the prime of manhood, and had every 
reason to hope for time to complete his work. No public 
enemy could be raised against him within the empire. One 
danger there was: lurking assassins beset his path. But 
with characteristic dignity he quietly refused a bodyguard, 
declaring it better to die at any time than to live always in fear 
of death. And so the daggers of men whom he had spared 
struck him down. 

A group of irreconcilable nobles plotted to take his life, — 
led by the envious Cassius and the weak enthusiast Brutus , 
whom Caesar had heaped with favors. They accomplished 
their crime in the Senate-house, on the Ides of March (March 
15), 44 B.c. Crowding around him, and fawning upon him as if 
to ask a favor, the assassins suddenly drew their daggers. Ac¬ 
cording to an old story, Caesar at first, calling for help, stood 
on his defense and wounded Cassius; but when he saw the 
loved and trusted Brutus in the snarling pack, he cried out 
sadly, “Thou, too, Brutus!” and drawing his toga about him 
with calm dignity, he resisted no longer, but sank at the foot 
of Pompey’s statue, bleeding from three and twenty stabs. 

No doubt, “Caesar was ambitious.” He was a broad¬ 
minded genius, with a strong man’s delight in ruling well. The 
murder came only five years after Caesar crossed the Rubicon. 
Those years, with their seven campaigns, gave only eight¬ 
een months for constructive reform. The work was left in¬ 
complete ; but that which was actually accomplished dazzles 
the imagination, and marked out the lines along which Caesar’s 
successors, less grandly, had to move. 

The assassination led to fourteen years more of dreary civil 
war. Rome and all Italy rose against the murderers, and they 
fled to the East, where Pompey’s name was still a strength to 
the aristocrats. They were followed and crushed at Philippi 
in Macedonia (42 b.c.) by the forces of the West led by Mark 
Antony (one of Caesar’s officers) and Octavius Caesar, an 
adopted son of the first Imperator. Then Octavius and Antony 
divided the Roman world between themselves. Soon each 


The Ides 
of March 


Character 
and work 


Octavius 
and Antony 






210 


FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE 


Battle of 
Actium 


was plotting for the other’s share. The East had fallen to An* 
tony. In Egypt he became infatuated with Cleopatra. He 
bestowed rich provinces upon her, and, it was rumored, he 
planned to supplant Rome by Alexandria as chief capital. The 
West turned to Octavius as its champion. In 31, the rivals 
met in the naval battle of Actium off the coast of Greece. Early 
in the battle, Cleopatra took flight with the Egyptian ships. 
The infatuated Antony followed, deserting his fleet and army. 
Once more the West had won. Cleopatra, last of the Ptole¬ 
mies, soon took poison rather than grace Octavius’ triumph 
and Egypt became a Roman province. 

For Further Reading. — Davis* Readings, II, Nos. 50-54; and 
on Caesar's constructive work, Warde-Fowler’s Caesar, 326-359. Dr. 
Davis* Friend of Caesar (fiction) and Plutarch's Lives of Caesar, Pom- 
peius, and Cicero make admirable reading. 

Fact Drills 

1. List of important battles in Roman history to this point, with 
results of each. 

2. Dates. Continued drill on the list given on p. 147. Add the 
following and group other dates around these: 

510(?) b.c. “Expulsion** of the kings. 

390(?) b.c. Sack of Rome by the Gauls; and in like manner, 
the events for 367, 266, 146, 133, 49, 31 b.c. 



CHAPTER XXIV 


THE EMPERORS OF THE FIRST TWO CENTURIES, 

31 B.C.-180 A.D. 

Octavius spent the first two years after Actium in restoring 
order in the East. On his return to Rome in 29 b.c., the gates 
of the Temple of Janus were closed, in token of the reign of 
peace. 1 By prudent and generous measures, he soon brought 
back prosperity to long distracted Italy, and in 27 he laid down 
his office of triumvir (which had become a sole dictatorship) and 
declared the Republic restored. In fact, the Empire was safely 
established. 

Republican forms, indeed,' were respected even more scrupu¬ 
lously than by Julius Caesar. But supreme power lay in Octa¬ 
vius’ hands as Imperator, — master of the legions. This office 
he kept, and the Senate now added to it the new title Augustus , 
which had before been used only of the gods. It is by this 
name that he is thenceforth known. He was so popular that 
he did not need the open support of the army — which he 
stationed mostly on the frontiers. He lived more simply than 
many a noble, and walked the streets like any citizen, charming 
all whom he met by his frankness and courtesy. 

Augustus ruled forty-five years after Actium, carrying out 
the policies of the great Julius, and renewing, for the last time, 
the work of founding colonies outside Italy. Peace reigned; 
order was established; industry revived. Marshes were 
drained, and roads were built. A census of the whole Empire 
was taken, and many far-distant communities were granted 
Roman citizenship. Augustus himself tells us, in a famous 
inscription that in one year he began the rebuilding of eighty, 
two temples ; and of Rome he said, — “I found it brick, and 

1 These gates were always open when the Romans were engaged in any 
war. In all Roman history, they had been closed only twice before, — and 
one of these times was in the legendary reign of King Numa. 

211 


Augustus, 
31 B.C.- 
14 A.D. 


Under 

republican 

forms 


212 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 31 B.C-180 A.D. 


Worship 
of the dead 
Augustus 


4nd that 
of Christ 


have left it marble/’ He was also a generous patron of litera¬ 
ture and art. The “Augustan Age” is the golden age of Latin 
literature. 

At the death of Augustus, the Senate decreed him divine 

honors. Temples were erected 
in his honor, and he was wor¬ 
shiped as a god. Such worship 
seems impious to us, but to the 
Romans it was connected with 
the idea of ancestor worship 
and with the worship of an¬ 
cient heroes, and was a way 
of recognizing the Emperor as 
“the father of all his people.” 
The practice was adopted for 
the successors of Augustus, 
and this worship of dead em¬ 
perors soon became a general 
and widespread religious rite, 
the only religion common to 
the whole Roman world, — 
binding together the dwellers 
on the Euphrates, the Nile, 
the Tiber, the Rhone, and the 
Tagus. 

But shortly before this wor¬ 
ship began, when the reign of 
Augustus was a little more 
than half gone, there was 
born in a manger in an obscure 
hamlet of a distant corner of the Roman world, the child 
Jesus, whose religion, after some centuries, was to replace 
the worship of dead emperors and all other religious faiths 
of the pagan world. 



Augustus Caesar. — A statue now 
in the Vatican, Rome. 


At Augustus’ death, every one recognized that some one must 
be appointed to succeed him, and the Senate at once granted 





PLATE XXXI 




Above. — Roman Forum, northeast side, to-day. 

Below. — Roman Forum, same as above, as it was in Roman times, accord¬ 
ing to the “ restoration,” by Benvenuti. 










PLATE XXXII 



Ruins of the Aqueduct of Claudius, Crossing the Plain of Latium. — The water was brought forty 
miles from distant Apennine lakes to Rome, and for the final ten miles it was carried on arches like these. 













STORY OF THE EMPERORS 


213 


his titles and authority to his stepson Tiberius, whom he had 
“ recommended ” to them. Tiberius was stern, morose, suspi¬ 
cious, but an able, conscientious ruler. The nobles of the capital 
conspired against him, and were punished cruelly. The popu¬ 
lace of Rome, too, hated him because he abolished the Assembly 
where they had sold their votes, and because he refused to 
amuse them with gladiatorial sports. Therefore Tiberius 
established a permanent body of soldiers ( praetorian guards) 
in the capital; and he encouraged a system of paid spies. With 
reason the people of Rome looked upon him as a gloomy tyrant. 
But in the provinces he was proverbial for fairness , kindness , and 
good government. “ A good shepherd shears his sheep, he does not 
flay them,” was one of his sayings. In this reign occurred the 
crucifixion of Christ. 

Tiberius had adopted a grand nephew as his heir, and the 
Senate confirmed the appointment. This youth (Caligula) 
had been a promising boy; but now he suddenly became an 
insane monster, and was slain finally by officers of his guard. 

Caligula had named no successor. For a moment the Senate 
hoped to restore the old Republic; but the praetorians (devoted 
to the great Julian line) hailed Claudius, an uncle of Caligula, 
as Imperator, and the Senate had to confirm the appointment. 
Claudius had been a timid, awkward scholar and an author of 
tiresome books ; but now he gave his time faithfully to the hard 
work of governing, with good results. His reign is famous 
for a great extension of citizenship to provincials, for legislation 
to protect slaves against cruel masters, and for the conquest of 
southern Britain. 

Nero, Claudius’ stepson, became Emperor as a likable boy 
of sixteen. He had been trained by the philosopher Seheca 
(p. 226), and for two thirds of his reign he was guided by wise 
ministers. He cared little for affairs of government, but was 
fond of art, and ridiculously vain of his skill in music and poetry 
and he sought popular applause also as a gladiator. After some 
years his fears, together with a total lack of principle, led him 


Tiberius, 
14-37 A.D. 


Caligula, 

37-4i 


Claudius, 

41-54 


Nero, 54-68 



The burn¬ 
ing of Rome 


Nero’s 
persecution 
of Christians 


214 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 31 B.C.-180 A.D. 

to crime and tyranny. Wealthy nobles were put to death in 
numbers, and their property confiscated, Seneca himself being 
among the victims. 

During this reign, half of Rome was laid in ashes by the “ Great 
Fire” (Davis’ Readings, II, No. 65). In the densely populated 
parts of the city, many-storied, cheap, flimsy tenement houses 
projected their upper floors nearly across the narrow, crooked 
thoroughfares, so that the fire leaped 
easily from side to side. For six 
days and nights the flames raged 
unchecked, surging in billows over 
the slopes and through the valleys 
of the Seven Hills. By some, Nero 
was believed to have ordered the de¬ 
struction, in order that he might 
rebuild in more magnificent fashion. 
On better authority he was reported 
to have at least enjoyed the spec¬ 
tacle from the roof of his palace, 
singing a poem he had composed on 
the “Burning of Troy.” 

The new sect of Christians also were accused of starting the 
fire, out of their supposed “hatred for the human race,” and 
because they had so often declared that a fiery destruction of 
the world was coming. To turn attention from himself, Nero 
took up the charge against them, and carried out the first 
persecution of the Christians, one of the most cruel in all history. 
Victims, tarred with pitch, were burned as torches in the imperial 
gardens, to light the indecent revelry of the court at night; 
and others, clothed in the skins of animals, were torn by dogs 
for the amusement of the mob. The persecution, however, 
was confined to the capital. 

Nero’s disgraceful rule finally roused the legions on the fron¬ 
tiers to rebel; and to avoid capture, he stabbed himself, exclaim¬ 
ing, “What a pity for such an artist to die !” 

The year 69 a.d. was one of wild confusion and war between 



Bronze Coin of Nero — to 
commemorate the closing of 
the doors of the Temple of 
Janus (cf. p. 211, note). 




STORY OF THE EMPERORS 


215 


several rivals. Finally the powerful legions in Syria “pro- Vespasian, 
claimed” their general, Flavius Vespasianus, who quickly became 7079 
master of the Empire. He and his sons are known as Flavians 1 
(from his first name). He was the grandson of a Sabine laborer, 
and was blunt and coarse, but honest, industrious, and capable. 

He hated sham; and at the end, as he felt the hand of death 



Detail from the Triumphal Arch of Titus (see Plate XXXIV, facing 
217), showing Jewish captives and the seven-branched candlestick taken 
from the Temple at Jerusalem. 


upon him, he said, with grim irony, “I think I am becom¬ 
ing a god,” —in allusion to the worship of dead emperors. 

In this reign came the destruction of Jerusalem. Judea 
had been made a tributary state by Pompey (63 b.c.), and in 
4 a.d. it became a Roman province. But the Jews were restless 
under foreign rule, and in the year 66, in Nero’s time, a national 
uprising drove out the Roman officers. This rebellion was now 
put down by Vespasian and his son Titus. In 70 a.d. Titus 
captured Jerusalem, after a stubborn siege. He had offered 

1 The preceding five emperors (descendants-in-law of Julius Caesar) are 
known as the Julian line. They had been Romans; the Flavians came from 
Italy outside Rome. Their successors were provincials. 













216 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 31 B.C.-180 A.D. 

Siege and liberal terms ; but the starving Jews made a frenzied resistance, 
of Rrtf 1011 anc * w ^ en t ^ ie wa ^ s were finally stormed, many of them slew 
talem their women and children and died in the flames. The miserable 

remnant for the most part were sold into slavery. (Only 


Pompeii 
destroyed 
by Vesu¬ 
vius 

Domitian, 

81-96 


Detail from Trajan’s Column (see Plate XXXIII opposite) : Trajan 
sacrificing a bull at the bridge over the Danube, just completed by his 
soldiers. This bridge was a remarkable structure, — probably the most 
wonderful bridge in the world until the era of iron and steel bridgework. 

recently, during the World War, was a project started to re¬ 
establish a Jewish state in Palestine.) 

Titus had been associated in the government with his father. 
The most famous event of his two years’ reign was the destruc¬ 
tion of Pompeii and Herculaneum by Vesuvius (Plate XXIV). 

Domitian, younger brother of Titus, was a strong, stern 
ruler. He built a famous wall 336 miles long, to complete the 
northern boundary from the Rhine to the Danube — a line of 
forts joined to one another by earthen ramparts; and he took 
the office of Censor for life, and so could legally make and un¬ 
make senators at will. This led the Roman nobles to conspire 
against him and finally he was assassinated. 




















PLATE XXXIII 



Trajan’s Column, commemorating the Dacian conquest. It is 100 feet 
high, and the spiral bands of sculpture that circle it contain 2500 figures. 
It is the finest survival of a favorite Roman form of monument. Cf. 
p. 32 for an earlier model. See a detail on p. 216. 














PLATE XXXIV 



Triumphal Arch of Titus (showing the Colosseum in the distance). (Cl. 
Plate XXXVII facing p. 228.) The triumphal arch, spanning a city 
street like a gate, was a favorite decorative application of the arch by 
the Romans to commemorate victories. For an Egyptian model, see 
illustration after p. 10. Napoleon’s famous Arch of' Triumph at Paris is a 
modern imitation. For the position of the Arch of Titus in the Roman 
Forum, see Plate facing p. 201. For detail, see p. 215. 





















STORY OF THE EMPERORS 


217 


The Senate chose the next ruler from its own number; and 
that emperor with his four successors are known as the five 
good emperors. The first of the five was Nerva, an aged 
senator of Spanish descent, who died after a kindly rule of six¬ 
teen months. 

Trajan, the adopted son of Nerva, was a Spaniard 
and a great general. He conquered and colonized Dacia, 
a vast district north of the Danube, and then attacked the 
Parthians in Asia, adding new provinces beyond the Eu¬ 
phrates. These victories mark the greatest extent of the Roman 
Empire. 

Hadrian, a Spanish kinsman of Trajan, succeeded him. 
Wisely and courageously, he abandoned most of Trajan’s 
conquests in Asia (disregarding the sneers and murmurs of 
nobles and populace), and withdrew the frontier there to the old 
line of the Euphrates, more easily defended. He looked to the 
fortification of other exposed frontiers. His most famous work 
of this kind was a wall in Britain, from the Solway to the Tyne, 
to keep out the unconquered Piets of the northern highlands. 1 

Hadrian spent most of his twenty years’ rule in inspecting 
the provinces. Now he is in Britain, now in Dacia; again in 
Gaul, or in Africa, Syria, or Egypt. He spent several months 
in Asia Minor, and in Macedonia; and twice he visited Athens, 
his favorite city, which he adorned with splendid buildings. 

Hadrian was followed by Antoninus Pius, a pure and gentle 
spirit, the chief feature of whose peaceful rule was legislation 
to prevent cruelty to slaves. On the evening of his death, when 
asked by the officer of the guard for the watchword for the night, 
Antoninus gave the word Equanimity, which might have served 
as the motto of his life. (Davis’ Readings gives a noble tribute 
to his character by his successor.) 

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, nephew and adopted son of 

1 This “Wall of Hadrian” was seventy miles long, extending almost 
from sea to sea. Considerable portions can still be traced. It consisted 
of three distinct parts: (1) a twenty-foot stone wall and ditch, on the north; 
(2) a double earthen rampart and ditch, about one hundred and twenty 
yards to the south; and (3) between wall and rampart a series of fourteen 
fortified camps connected by a road. 


Nerva, 

96-98 


Trajan, 

98-117 


Hadrian, 

117-138 


Antoninus 

Pius, 

138-161 






218 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 31 B.C.-180 A.D. 


Marcus 

Aurelius, 

161-180 


Commodus, 

180-192 



Antoninus Pius, was a philosopher and student. He belonged 
to the Stoic school, but in him that stern philosophy was softened 
by a gracious gentleness. His tastes made him wish to con¬ 
tinue in his father’s footsteps, but he had fallen upon harsher 
times. The barbarians renewed their attacks upon the Danube, 
the Rhine, and the Euphrates. The emperor and his lieu- 


Ruins of a Temple to Zeus at Athens Built by Hadrian. —Note the 
Corinthian style (p. 72) and the Acropolis in the background. 

tenants beat them back, only at the cost of almost incessant 
war; and the gentle philosopher lived and wrote and died in 
camp. A great Asiatic plague, too, depopulated the Empire 
and demoralized society. The populace thought the disease 
a visitation from offended gods, and were frantically excited 
against the unpopular sect of Christians who refused to worship 
the gods of Rome. Thus the reign of the kindly Aurelius was 
marked by a cruel persecution. 

Marcus Aurelius’ son, Commodus, was an infamous wretch 
whose reign begins the period of decay. 

For Further Reading. — Davis’ Readings, II, No. 56 (Augustus’ 
own account of his work) and No. 59, and Capes’ Early Empire, 
especially ch. i. 



































































• * 






















* 



























• * 


























. 

. 








































. 












* 












































I » 













































































































































































































CHAPTER XXV 


THE EARLY EMPIRE : GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY 

Republican Rome had little to do . . . with modern life: imperial 
Rome, everything. — Stille. 

The early emperors did not invent much new political machin¬ 
ery. Following the example of Julius Caesar, each one merely 
concentrated in his own person the most important offices of the 
Republic, — powers which had originally been intended to check 
one another. He could appoint and degrade senators; he led 
the debates in the Senate — and could control its decrees, which 
had become the chief means of lawmaking. He appointed the 
governors of the provinces, the generals of the legions, the city 
prefect, the head of the city police, and the prefect of the prae¬ 
torians. Each successor of Augustus was hailed Imperator 
Caesar Augustus. (The title Caesar survived till recently, in 
Kaiser and in Tsar.) 

The Roman world was a broad belt of land stretching east 
and west, from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, with the Mediter¬ 
ranean for its central highway. On the south it was bounded 
by sandy deserts, African and Arabian; on the north, by stormy 
waters; and at the weaker gaps — on the Rhine, the Danube, 
the Euphrates, and at the Walls of Domitian and Hadrian — 
stood mighty sleepless legions to watch and ward. 

Within this vast territory, about as large as the United States, 
were 75,000,000 people. They lived mostly in cities (muni- 
cipia) large and small, throbbing with industry and with intel¬ 
lectual life and possessing some local self-government in those 
municipal institutions they were to pass on to us. Stockaded 
villages had changed into stately marts of trade, huts into pal¬ 
aces, footpaths into paved roads. Roman irrigation made 
part of the African desert the garden of the world (where to-day 

219 


The “ Prin- 
cipate ” 


Life under 
the Empire 
concen¬ 
trated in 
“ muni- 
cipia ” 




220 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE —TO 180 A.D. 


only desolate ruins mock the eye), and the symbol of Africa 
was a gracious virgin with arms filled with sheaves of golden 
grain. Gaul (France) was Romanized late, after Julius Caesar; 
but in the third century a.d. that district had 116 flourishing 
cities, with public baths, temples, aqueducts, 1 roads, and famous 
schools that drew Roman youth even from the Tiber’s banks. 



Aqueduct near Nimes, France, built about 150 a.d. by the Emperor An¬ 
toninus Pius to supply the city with water from mountain springs 25 
miles distant; present condition of the long gray structure, where it 
crosses the Gard River. Water pipes were carried through hills by tun¬ 
nels and across streams and valleys on arches like these. This aqueduct 
has vanished (its stones used for other buildings) except for this part; but 
here it is still possible to walk through the pipes on the top row of arches. 


Most towns were places of 20,000 people or less, and usually 
each one was merely the center of a farming district; but there 
were also a few great centers of trade, — Rome, with perhaps 
2,000,000 people; Alexandria (in Egypt) and Antioch (in Asia) 

1 The water supply of many large cities was better than that of large 
cities to-day, and the same is true of public baths — which in Rome could 
care for 60,000 people at a time. 







TOWN LIFE 


221 


with 500,000 each; and Corinth, Carthage, Ephesus, and Lyons, 
with some 250,000 apiece. 

These commercial cities were likewise centers of manufac¬ 
tures. The Emperor Hadrian visited Alexandria (about 125 
a.Dj) and wrote in a letter : “No one is idle ; some work glass; 
some make paper (papyrus); some weave linen. Money is 
the only god.” The looms of Sidon and the other old Phoeni¬ 
cian cities turned forth ceaselessly their precious purple cloths. 
Miletus, Rhodes, and other Greek cities of the Asiatic coast 
were famous for their woolen manufactures. Syrian factories 
poured silks, costly tapestries, and fine leather into western 
Europe. Each town had many gilds of artisans (p. 171). In 
Rome the bakers , gild listed 254 shops; and the silversmiths 
of Ephesus were numerous enough {Acts xix, 23-41) to stir 
up a formidable riot. (Slaves did most of the unskilled labor; 
and a baker or mason would have two or three or a dozen to 
work under his direction.) 

The roads were safe. Piracy ceased from the seas, and trade 
flourished as it was not to flourish again until the days of Co¬ 
lumbus. The ports were crowded with shipping, and the Medi¬ 
terranean was spread with happy sails (ships not very different 
from those in which Columbus was to cross the Atlantic). 
The grand military roads ran in trunk-lines — a thousand 
miles at a stretch — from every frontier toward the central 
heart of the Empire, with a dense network of branches in every 
province. Guidebooks described routes and distances. Inns 
abounded. The imperial couriers that hurried along the great 
highways passed a hundred and fifty milestones a day. Private 
travel from the Thames to the Euphrates was swifter, safer, 
and more comfortable than ever again until the age of railroads, 
less than a century ago. 

The products of one region of the Empire were known in every 
other part. Women of the Swiss mountains wore jewelry made 
by the silversmiths of Ephesus; and gentlemen in Britain and 
in Cilicia drank wines made in Italy. One merchant of Phrygia 
(in Asia Minor) asserts on his gravestone that he had sailed 
“ around Greece to Italy seventy-two times.” 


Industry 
and trade 


Communica¬ 
tion by sea 
and land 


Commerce 


222 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE — TO 180 A.D. 


And men traveled for pleasure as well as for business. One 
language answered all needs from London to Babylon, and it was 
as common for the gentleman of Gaul to visit the wonders of 
Rome or of the Nile as for the American to-day to spend a sum¬ 
mer in England or France. (Quite in modern fashion, such trav¬ 
elers defaced precious monuments with scrawls. The colossal 



The Black Gate (Porta Nigra), a Roman structure at Trier (Treves). 
Cf-text on p. 223. — That same frontier city contains other famous 
Roman ruins: cf. Early Progress, p. 380. 


Egyptian statue pictured after p. 27 bears a scratched inscrip¬ 
tion that a certain Roman “Gemullus with his dear wife 
Rufilla” had visited it.) 

There was also a vast commerce with regions beyond the bound¬ 
aries of the Empire. As English and Dutch traders, three hun¬ 
dred years ago, journeyed far into the savage interior of America 
for better bargains in furs, so the indomitable Roman traders 
pressed on into regions where the Roman legions never camped. 
From the Baltic shores they brought back amber, fur, and 




TRADE, TRAVEL, AND PEACE 


223 


flaxen German hair with which the dark Roman ladies liked to 
adorn their heads. Such goods the trader bought cheaply with 
toys and trinkets and wine. A Latin poet speaks of “many 
merchants” who reaped “immense riches” by daring voyages 
over the Indian Ocean “to the mouth of the Ganges.” India, 
Ceylon, and Malaysia sent to Europe indigo, spices, pearls, 
sapphires, drawing away, in return, vast sums of Roman gold 
and silver. And from shadowy realms beyond India came 
the silk yarn that kept the Syrian looms busy. Chinese annals 
tell of Roman traders bringing to Canton glass and metal wares, 
amber, and drugs — and speak also of an embassy from Marcus 
Aurelius. 

In 212 a.d. the long process of extending citizenship was com¬ 
pleted by an imperial decree making all free inhabitants of the 
Empire full citizens. This wiped out all remaining distinctions 
between Italy and the former “ provinces”; and the later 
emperors were more at home at York or Cologne or at some 
capital by the Black Sea than at old Rome — which perhaps 
they visited only once or twice for some solemn pageant. 

This widespread, happy society rested in “the good Roman 
peace” for more than two hundred years, — from the reign 
of Augustus Caesar through that of Marcus Aurelius, or from 
31 b.c. to 180 a.d. No other part of the world so large has 
ever known such unbroken prosperity and such freedom from 
the waste and horror of war for so long a time. Few troops 
were seen within the Empire, and “ the distant clash of arms 
[with barbarians] on the Euphrates or the Danube scarcely 
disturbed the tranquillity of the Mediterranean lands.” 

The “Roman” army had become a body of disciplined mer¬ 
cenaries, with intense pride in the Roman name. More and 
more the legions were renewed by enlistment on the frontiers 
where they were stationed, and in the third century barbarians 
became a large part of the army. From the hungry foes surging 
against its walls, the Empire drew the guardians of its peace. 
At the expiration of their twenty years with the eagles, 1 the 

1 The Roman military standard became the model for late European gov¬ 
ernments that claimed to succeed Rome. 


The world 

becomes 

Roman 


Peace and 
prosperity 
for 200 years 





Unity of 
the Roman 
world 


Architec¬ 

ture 


The 

universities 
and gram¬ 
mar 
schools 


224 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE — TO 180 A.D. 

veterans became Roman citizens, no matter where recruited; 
and commonly they were settled in colonies with grants of land. 
Thus they helped mix the many races of Rome into one. Span¬ 
ish troops in Switzerland, Swiss in Britain, Gauls in Africa, 
Africans in Armenia, settled and married far from the lands 
of their birth. 

A few of the emperors at Rome, like Nero and Caligula, 
were weak or wicked; but their follies and vices concerned 
only the nobles of the capital. The Empire as a whole went 
on with little change during their short reigns. To the vast 
body of the people of the Roman world, the crimes of an occa¬ 
sional tyrant were unknown. To them he seemed (like the 
good emperors) merely the symbol of the peace and prosperity 
which enfolded them. 

In language, and somewhat in culture, the West remained 
Latin, and the East, 1 Greek; but trade, travel, and the mild 
and just Roman law made the world one in feeling. Briton, 
African, Asiatic, knew one another only as Romans. An 
Egyptian Greek of the period expressed this world-wide patri¬ 
otism in a noble ode, closing, — 

“Though we tread Rhone’s or Orontes’ 2 shore, 

Yet are we all one nation evermore.” 

Painting and sculpture followed the old Greek models; but 
the Roman art was architecture. Many of the world’s most 
famous buildings belong to the Early Empire. Roman archi¬ 
tecture had more massive grandeur, and was fonder of orna¬ 
ment, than the Greek. Instead of the simple Doric or Ionic 
columns it commonly used the rich Corinthian, and it added, for 
its own especial features, the noble Roman arch and the dome. 

Rome, Alexandria, and Athens were the three great centers 
of learning. Each had its university, with vast libraries and 
many professorships. Vespasian began the practice of paying 
salaries from the public treasury, and under Marcus Aurelius 
the government began to provide permanent endowments (of 

1 The Adriatic may be taken as a convenient line of division (p. 182). 

2 A river of Asia Minor. 








PLATE XXXV 



The Way of Tombs at Pompeii. — Each Roman city buried its dead out¬ 
side one of its gates along the highway, which therefore was lined for a 
great distance with marble monuments or the simpler raised headstones 
that are also shown in this picture. The ruins shown alongside the 
Appian Way (p. 166) are tombs and monuments. The disorders of later 
centuries destroyed most of these monuments in Italy, though we do still 
have many interesting inscriptions from them. At Pompeii the volcanic 
covering preserved them almost intact. A husband inscribes upon his 
wife’s monument: “ only once did she cause me sorrow; and that was by 
her death.” Another praises in his wife “purity, loyalty, affection, a sense 
of duty, a gentle nature, and whatever other qualities God would wish 
to give woman.” The tombstone of a poor physician declares that “to all 
the needy he gave his services without charge.” See also pp. 226-7. 









PLATE XXXVI 



The Pantheon To-day: “Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods.” 
(Read the rest of Byron’s fine description in Canto IV of Childe Harold.) 
Agrippa, victor of Actium and chief minister of Augustus, built this 
temple in the Campus Martius; and it was rebuilt, in its present form, 
by Hadrian — who, however, left the inscription in honor of Agrippa. 
The structure is 132 feet in diameter and of the same height, surmounted 
by a majestic dome that originally flashed with tiles of bronze. The 
interior is broadly flooded with light from an aperture in the dome 26 
feet in diameter. The inside walls were formed of splendid columns of 
yellow marble, with gleaming white capitals supporting noble arches, 
upon which again rested more pillars and another row of arches — up to 
the base of the dome (see section opposite). Under the arches, in 
pillared recesses, stood the statues of the gods of all religions, for this 
grand temple was symbolic of the grander toleration and unity of the 
Roman world. Time has dealt gently with it, and almost alone of the 
buildings of its day it has lasted to ours, to be used now as a Christian 
church. 



















ART AND LEARNING 


225 


which only the income could be used each year), as we do for 
our universities. The leading subjects were Latin and Greek 
literature, rhetoric, philosophy, music, arithmetic, 1 geometry, and 
astronomy . 2 Law ^yas a specialty at Rome, and medicine at 
Alexandria. Every important city in the Empire had its 
well-equipped grammar school, corresponding to an advanced 
high school or small college; and like the universities, to 
which they led, they had permanent endowments from the 
Roman government. 

All this education was for the upper classes, but occasionally Schools: 
bright boys from the lower classes found some wealthy patron the poor 



Cross-section of the Pantheon. 


to send them to a good school, and rich men and women some¬ 
times bequeathed money to schools in their home cities for the 
education of poor children. Davis’ Readings (II, No. 80) tells 
of such an endowment, and (No. 79) repeats Horace’s story of 
how his father, a poor farmer, gave him the education that 
made it possible for him to become one of the most famous 
of poets. 

1 Arithmetic was an advanced subject when Roman numerals were 
used. 

2 The first three subjects, the literary group, were the trivium; the last 
four, the mathematical group, were the quadrivium. 




































226 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE —TO 180 A.D. 


Literature 


Morals 
under the 
Empire 


Literature played a small part in Roman life until just before the 
Empire. The following lists of names for the four periods, down to 
Marcus Aurelius, are for reference only. 

1. The “Age of Cicero/’ gave us Lucretius, perhaps the most sublime 
of all Latin poets, and Caesar’s concise historical narrative. Cicero 
himself remains the foremost orator of Rome and the chief master of 
the graceful Latin prose essay. 

2. For the “Augustan Age” only a few of the many important 
writers can be mentioned. Horace (soil of an Apulian freedman) wrote 
graceful odes and playful satires. Vergil (from Cisalpine Gaul), the 
chief Roman poet, is best known to schoolboys by his epic, the Aeneid , 
but critics rank higher his Georgies, exquisite poems of country life. 
Livy (Cisalpine Gaul) and Dionysius (an Asiatic Greek) wrote great 
histories of Rome. Strabo (living at Alexandria) produced a geography 
of the'Roman world, and speculated on the possibility of a continent 
in the Atlantic between Europe and Asia. The last two authors wrote 
in Greek. 

3. To the second half of the first century belong another host of 
great names : among them, Pliny the Elder (of Cisalpine Gaul), a scien¬ 
tist who perished at the eruption of Vesuvius in his zeal to observe the 
phenomena; the Stoic philosophers Epictetus, a Phrygian slave, and 
Seneca, a noble of Spanish birth. 

4. For the second century, we have the charming Letters of Pliny 
the Younger, a Cisalpine Gaul; the satirical poetry of the Italian 
Juvenal; the philosophical and religious Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius; 
the histories and biographies (in Greek) of Appian, an Alexandrian, 
of Plutarch, a Boeotian, and (in Latin) of the Roman Tacitus. Science 
Is represented chiefly by Galen, an Asiatic, who wrote Greek treatises 
on medicine, and by Ptolemy, an Egyptian astronomer, whose geog¬ 
raphy was the standard authority until the time of Columbus. (Ptol¬ 
emy unhappily abandoned the truer teachings of Aristarchus and 
Eratosthenes (p. 146), and taught that the heavens revolved about 
the earth for their center.) 

Under the Empire morals grew gentle, and manners were 
refined. The Letters of Pliny reveal a society high-minded, 
polite, and virtuous. Pliny himself is a type of the finest 
gentleman of to-day in delicacy of feeling, sensitive honor, and 
genial courtesy. Marcus Aurelius shows like qualities on the 
throne. The philosopher Epictetus shows them in a slave. Fu¬ 
neral inscriptions show tender affection. Over the grave of a 
little girl there is inscribed, — “ She rests here in the soft cradle 
of the Earth . . . comely, charming, keen of mind, gay in talk 









MORALS 


227 


and play. If there be ought of compassion in the gods, bear her 
aloft to the light.” In the Thoughts 1 of Marcus Aurelius the 
emperor thanks the gods “ for a good grandfather, good parents, 
a good sister, and good friends,” and (stating his obligations to 
various associates), — “From my mother I learned piety, and 
to abstain not merely from evil deeds but from evil thoughts.” 
Again a jotting in camp (on the borders of Germany) reads, — 
“When thou wishest to delight thyself think of the virtues of 
those who live with thee.” 

Sympathies broadened. The unity of the vast Roman world 
prepared the way for a feeling of human brotherhood. Said 
Marcus Aurelius, “ As emperor I am a Roman; but as a man 
my city is the world.’ 

The age prided itself, 
justly, upon its progress 
and its humanity, much 
as our own does. The 
Emperor Trajan instructed 
a provincial governor not 
to act upon anonymous 
accusations, because such 
conduct “ does not belong 
to our age” There was 
a vast amount of private 
and public charity, with 
homes for orphans and 
hospitals for the poor. 

Woman, too, won more 
freedom than she was to 
find again until after 1850 
a.d. The profession of 
medicine was open to her, and law recognized her as the equal 
of man. 

This broad humanity was reflected in imperial law. The 
harsh law of the Republic became humane. Women, children, 

1 One of the world’s noblest books, closer to the spirit of Christ than any 
other pagan writing. Davis’ Readings gives some excellent extracts. 



Broader 

human 

sympathies 


More hu¬ 
mane law 





228 EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE —TO 180 A.D. 


and even dumb beasts shared its protection. Torture was 
limited. The rights of the accused were better recognized. 
From the Empire dates the maxim, “Better to let the guilty 
escape than to punish the innocent.” “ All men by the law of 
nature are equal ” became a law maxim, through the great 
jurist Ulpian. Slavery, he argued, had been created only by 
the lower law, enacted not by nature but by man. Therefore, 
if one man claimed another as his slave, the benefit of any 
possible doubt was to be given to the one so claimed. (It is 
curious to remember that the rule was just the other way in 
nearly all Christian countries through the Middle Ages, and in 
the United States under the Fugitive Slave laws from 1793 to 
the Civil War.) 

The dark True, there was a darker side. During some reigns the court 

Slde was rank with hideous debauchery, and at all times the rabble 

of Rome, made up of the off-scourings of all peoples, was 
ignorant and vicious. Some evil customs that shock us were 
part of the age. To avoid cost and trouble, the lower classes, 
with horrible frequency- and indifference, exposed their infants to 
die. Satirists, as in our own day, railed at the growth of divorce 
among the rich. Slavery threw its shadow across the Roman 
world. At the gladiatorial sports — so strong is fashion — 
delicate ladies thronged the benches of the amphitheater with¬ 
out shrinking at the agonies of the dying. 

For Further Reading. — Davis’ Readings, II, to No. 108. For 
those who wish to read further on this important period, the best and 
most readable material will be found in Jones’ Roman Empire (an ex¬ 
cellent one-volume work), chs. i-vi; Capes 'Early Empire and The 
Antonines; Thomas’ Roman Life; Preston and Dodge’s Private Life of 
the Romans; or Johnston’s Private Life of the Romans. 







PLATE XXXVII 




Above. — The Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater ) at Rome, built by Ves¬ 
pasian and Titus. It covers six acres, and the walls rise 150 feet. It 
seated 45,000 spectators. For centuries, in the Middle Ages, its ruins were 
used as a stone quarry for palaces of Roman nobles, but its huge size pre¬ 
vented complete destruction. Cf. page 208, and Plate XXXIX. 

Below. — Interior View of the Colosseum. The human figures in the 
arena give some idea of the size of the building. 



















PLATE XXXVIII 



Trajan’s Triumphal Arch at Beneventum in South Italy, commem¬ 
orating his victories in the East (cf. p. 217). 














CHAPTER XXVI 


THE LATER EMPIRE 

The hopeless feature of the Roman Empire was the absence of 
liberty. The Roman world, in the first two centuries, was 
happy, contented, prosperous, and well-governed, but not 
free. Even its virtues had something of a servile tone. More¬ 
over, throughout the provinces, as in Italy earlier, great land¬ 
lords were crowding the small farmers off the land, and that 
yeoman class were giving way to slave or serf tillers of the soil. 

And so the third century began a period of swift decline. For 
a time despotism had served as a medicine for anarchy (p. 206), 
but now its poison began to show. Weak or vicious rulers 
followed one another in ruinous succession. The throne be¬ 
came the sport of the soldiery. Ninety-two years (193-284 
a.d.) saw twenty-seven “barrack emperors” set up by the army. 
All but four of these were slain in some revolt, and two of 
those four fell in battle against invading barbarians. 

Happily, the army wearied of disorder, and in 270 it set a 
great leader upon the throne. Aurelian was an Illyrian peasant 
who had risen from the ranks. He ruled only five years, but 
his achievements rival those of the five years of the first Caesar. 
He reorganized the army and restored the boundaries, driving 
back the barbarians beyond the Danube and the Rhine, but 
abandoning Dacia (beyond the Danube) to the Teutonic Goths. 
Zenobia, the great queen who had set up a rival Arabian empire 
at Palmyra, he brought captive to Rome and he recovered 
Gaul, which some time before had broken away into a separate 
kingdom. 

At one moment in this busy reign, the Alemanni penetrated 
to the Po, and threw Italy into a panic. No hostile army 
had been seen in that peninsula since Hannibal — for almost 
five hundred years — and the proud capital had spread out 

229 


Decline in 
the third 
century 


Aurelian, 

270-275 





230 


ROMAN EMPIRE —THIRD CENTURY 


Reorgan¬ 
ization by 
Diocletian, 
284-305 


unguarded far beyond her early ramparts. Aurelian repulsed 
the invaders and then built new walls about Rome, — a somber 
symbol of a new age. 



3. Arch of Titus. 

4. Via Sacra. 

5. Via Nova. 

6. Vicus Tuscus- 

7. Vicus Jugarius. 


11. Arch. 21. Forum Boarium. 

12. Column of Trajan. 22. Mausoleum of Augustus 

13. Column of Anto- 23. Mausoleum of Hadrian. 

ninus. 24. Baths of Constantine. 

14. Baths of Agrippa. 25. Baths of Diocletian. 


8. Arch of Septimius 15. Pantheon. 26. Baths of Titus- 

Severus. 16. Theater of Pompey. 27. Baths of Caracalla. 

9. Clivus Capitolinus. 17. Portico of Pompey. 28. Amphitheatrum Cas- 

18- Circus Flaminius. trense. 


Just as Aurelian was ready to take up internal reorganization, 
death snatched him away, and the task fell to his first strong 
successor, Diocletian, grandson of an Illyrian slave. For more 































“BARRACK EMPERORS 


231 


convenient administration, this ruler divided the Roman world 
into an East and a West, along the dividing lines between the 
old Greek and Latin civilizations; and each half he subdivided 
again and again into units of several grades — prefectures, 
dioceses, provinces. To care for these divisions, he then created 
a series of officers in regular grades, as in an army. Each 
was placed under the immediate direction of the one just above 
him, and the lines all converged from below to the emperor. 
Each official sifted all business that came to him from his sub¬ 
ordinates, and sent on to his superior only the more important 
matters. The earlier, loosely organized despotism had become a vast 
centralized despotism, a highly complex machine, which fixed re¬ 
sponsibility precisely and distributed duties in a workable way. 

Despotism was now avowed. Diocletian cast off the Repub¬ 
lican cloak of Augustus and adopted even the forms of Oriental 
monarchy. He wore a diadem of gems and robes of silk and 
gold, and fenced himself with multitudes of functionaries and 
elaborate ceremonial. The highest nobles, if allowed to ap¬ 
proach him, had to prostrate themselves at his feet. 

And the change was in more than form. The Senate became 
merely a city council for Rome : its advice was no longer asked 
in lawmaking. The emperor made laws by publishing edicts , 
or by sending a rescript (set of directions) to provincial governors. 
(The only other source of new law lay in the interpretation 
of old law by judges appointed by the emperor.) 

It is desirable for students to discuss fully these forms of 
government. “Absolutism” refers to the source of power: 
in an absolute monarchy, supreme power is in the hands of 
one person. “Centralization” refers to the kind of adminis¬ 
tration. A centralized administration is one carried on by 
officials of many grades, all appointed from above. Absolutism 
and centralization do not necessarily go together. A government 
may come from the people, and yet rule through a centralized 
administration, as in France to-day. It may be absolute, 
and yet allow much freedom to local agencies, as in Russia 
in past centuries. 


Excursus: 

“ Central¬ 
ization ” 
and “Abso¬ 
lutism ” 




232 ROMAN EMPIRE — FOURTH CENTURY 


Under a Napoleon or a Diocletian, a centralized govern¬ 
ment may produce rapid benefits. But it does nothing to 
educate the people politically. Local self-government is often 
provokingly slow, but it is surer in the long run. 


Crushing 
weight of 
the bureau¬ 
cratic 
despotism 


Decline of 
population: 
slavery 


The fourth century showed outward prosperity, but this 
appearance was deceitful. The system of Diocletian warded off 
invasion: but its own weight was , crushing. The Empire had 
become “ a great tax-gathering and barbarian-fighting machine. 
It collected taxes in order to fight barbarians. But the time 
came when people feared the tax-collector more than the bar¬ 
barians, as the complex government came to cost more and 
more. About 400 a.d., the Empire began to crumble before 
barbarian attacks less formidable than many that had been 
rebuffed in early centuries. Secret forces had been sapping the 
strength and health of the Roman world. 

1. For the century following the pestilence of Marcus 
Aurelius’ reign, a series of terrible Asiatic plagues swept off 
vast numbers ; but population had already begun to decline. The 
main cause of this decay, probably, was the widespread slave 
system. The wealthy classes of society do not have large 
families. Our population to-day grows mainly from the working 
class. But in the Roman Empire the place of free workingmen 
was taken mainly by slaves. Slaves rarely had families; and 
if they had, the master commonly “ exposed ” slave children to 
die, since it was easier and cheaper to buy a new slave, from 
among captive barbarians, than to rear one. Besides, the 
competition of slave labor ground into the dust what free 
labor there was; so that free working people could not afford 
to raise large families, but were driven to the cruel practice 
of exposing their infants. Year after year, “the human har¬ 
vest was bad.” 

2. The pernicious alliance between the money power and 
the government had grown closer. True, Diocletian for a 
time sought ‘to break it, charging that the ruinous rise in the 
cost of living was due to combinations of capitalists to raise 
prices. He accused such combinations of “raging avarice” 



PLATE XXXIX 





Roman Amphitheater at Nimes. — Another illustration of the fact that every Roman city made lavish provision for 































































































♦ 









• I 





























































































SWIFT DECAY 


233 


and “unbridled desire for plunder,” and, in a vain attempt 
to check the evil, he tried to fix by edict the highest price it 
should be lawful to ask for each of some eight hundred articles 
of daily use. Such an effort (in that day at least) was doomed 
to fail. But it was the only effort of the government (after 
Caesar’s time) to interfere on the side of the poor. No serious 
attempt was made, after the early days of the Empire, to build 
up a new free peasantry by giving farms to the unemployed 
millions of the cities, as Gracchus and Caesar had tried to do. 
The noble landlords who shared among themselves the wide 
domains of Africa, Gaul, and Spain would have fought fiercely 
any attempt by the government to recover part of their domains 
to make homes for free settlers. 

But there is another side to the question. In the days of 
Gracchus and of Caesar, the city mob was made up, in good 
part, of ex-farmers, or of their sons, who had been driven from 
the land against their will. But long before Diocletian’s day, 
the rabble of Rome or Alexandria had lost all touch with country 
life . Sure of free doles of grain, sleeping in gateways, perhaps, 
but spending their days in the splendid free public baths or 
in the terrible fascination of gladiatorial games or of the chariot 
races, they could no longer be drawn to the simple life and hard 
labor of the farm — even if farming had continued profitable. 
We know that to-day, in America, hundreds of thousands of 
stalwart men prefer want and misery on the crowded sidewalks 
and under the white blaze of city lights, with a chance to squan¬ 
der a rare dime on “the movies,” to the monotony and lone¬ 
liness of a comfortable living in the country. So in the ancient 
world, it was probably too late, when the Empire came, to 
wean the mob from its city life. 

3. The classes of society were becoming fixed. At the top 
was the emperor. At the bottom were peasantry, artisans, 
and slaves, to produce food and wealth wherewith to pay taxes. 
Between were two aristocracies, — a small imperial nobility 
of great landlords, and an inferior local nobility in each city. 

The landlord nobles had many special privileges. Through 
their influence upon the government and by bribery of officials. 


No serious 
1 back-to- 
the-land ” 
movement 


Approach 
to a caste 
system 







234 


LATER ROMAN EMPIRE 


“ Privi¬ 
lege ” of 
the great 
lords 

The smaller 
nobility 


The old 
middle class 
disappeared 


The artisans 


they escaped most of the burden of taxation — which they 
were better able to bear than the unhappy classes that paid. 

The local nobility (curials) were the families of the senate 
class in their respective cities. They, too, had some special 
privileges. They could not be drafted into the army or sub¬ 
jected to bodily punishment. They were compelled, however, 

to undergo great expenses 
in connection with the of¬ 
fices they had to fill. And, 
in particular, they were 
made responsible for the 
collection of the imperial 
taxes in their districts. 

This burden finally be¬ 
came so crushing that 
many curials tried desper¬ 
ately to evade it, — even 
by sinking into a lower 
class, or by flight to the 
barbarians. Then, to secure 
the revenue, law made them 
an hereditary class. They 
were forbidden to become 
clergy, soldiers, or lawyers ; 
they were not allowed to 
move from one city to another, or even to travel without per¬ 
mission. 

Between these local nobles and the artisan class, there had 
been, in the day of the Early Empire, a much larger middle 
class of small land-owners, merchants, bankers, and professional 
men. This middle class had now almost disappeared. Some 
were compelled by law to take up the duties of the vanishing 
curials. More, in the financial ruin of the period, sank into 
the working class. 

The condition of artisans had become desperate. An edict of 
Diocletian’s regarding prices and wages shows that a work¬ 
man received not more than one tenth the wages of an Ameri- 












DEARTH OF MEN AND MONEY 


235 


can workman of like grade, while food and clothing cost at 
least one third as much as in our time. His family rarely knew 
the taste of eggs or fresh meat. And now the law forbade him 
to change his trade. 

The peasantry had become serfs. That is, they were bound 
to their labor on the soil, and changed masters with the land 
they tilled. 

When the Empire began, the system of great estates, 
which had blighted Italy earlier, had begun also to curse the 
provinces. Free labor disappeared before slave labor; grain 
culture decreased, and large areas of land ceased to be tilled. 
To help remedy this state of affairs, and to keep up the 
food supply, the emperors introduced a new class of heredi¬ 
tary farm laborers. After successful wars, they gave large num¬ 
bers of barbarian captives to great landlords, — thousands in 
a batch, — not as slaves, but as serfs. 

The serfs were not personal property, as slaves were. They 
were part of the real estate. They, and their children after 
them, were attached to the soil, and could not be sold off it; 
nor could it be taken from them so long as they paid the land¬ 
lord a fixed rent in labor and produce. This growth of serfdom 
made it still more difficult for the free small-farmer to hold his 
place. That class more and more sank into serfs. On the 
other hand, many slaves rose into serfdom. 

4. A fourth great evil was the lack of money. The Empire 
did not have sufficient supplies of precious metals for the de¬ 
mands of business; and what money there was was steadily 
drained away to India and the distant Orient (p. 222). Even 
the imperial officers were forced to take part of their salaries 
in produce, — robes, horses, grain. Trade began to go back 
to the primitive form of barter; and it became harder and harder 
to collect taxes. 

5. Only one measure helped fill up the gaps in population. 
This was the introduction of barbarians from without. The 
Roman army had long been mostly made up of Germans; 
and (beside the captive colonies) conquered barbarians had 
been settled, hundreds of thousands at a time, in frontier prov- 


Farm labor 
grows into 
serfdom 


Lack of 
money 


Peaceful 
infusion 
of bar¬ 
barians 






236 


LATER ROMAN EMPIRE 


inces, while whole friendly tribes had been admitted peacefully 
into depopulated districts: But all this had a danger of its 
own. True the Germans so admitted took on Roman civili¬ 
zation ; but they kept up some feeling for their kindred beyond 
the Rhine. The harrier between the civilized world and its as¬ 
sailants was melting away. 



Body-guard of Marcus Aurelius, made up of Germans. — From 
Aurelius’ Triumphal Arch. 


The Empire In the third and fourth centuries there were no more great 
no longer poets or m^i of letters. Learning and patriotism both declined, 
resist Society began to fall into rigid castes, —the serf bound to his 

outside spot of land, the artisan to his trade, the curial to his office. 

Freedom of movement was lost. To the last, the legions were 
strong in discipline and pride, and ready to meet any odds. 
But more and more there was dearth of money and dearth of 
men to fill the legions or to pay them. The Empire had become a 
shell. 

For five hundred years, outside barbarians had been tossing 
wildly about the great natural walls of the civilized world. 
Sometimes they had broken in for a moment, but always to be 
destroyed by some Marius, Caesar, Aurelius, or Aurelian. 
In the fifth century they broke in to stay — but not until the 
Roman world had become Christian. 

For Further Reading. — Davis’ Readings, II, Nos. 109-119. 
Additional: Pelham’s Outlines, 577-586. 








CHAPTER XXVII 


THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


The first Roman writer to make any definite mention of the 
Christians is Tacitus, in 115 a.d. ; and it is plain that (like all 
fashionable Roman society much later) he had heard only 
misleading slander of them, for he refers to them merely as 
“haters of the human race” and practicers of a “pernicious 
superstition.” But from the Book of Acts we know that at 
least fifty years earlier there were Christian congregations 
among the poor in nearly all the large cities of the eastern part 
of the Empire. The religion of mercy and gentleness and 
hope appealed first to the weak and downtrodden. 

For three centuries Roman society and government despised 
the sect of Christians, and often persecuted them; but still the 
gentler spirit of the age, and its idea of human brotherhood, 
and especially the unity of the world under one government 
and one culture, prepared the way for the victory of the church. 
If Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy had remained split up in hun¬ 
dreds of petty states with varying languages and customs, 
Paul and other early missionaries could not so readily have made 
their way from city to city, or have been able to speak to their 
audiences. 

Four causes help to explain the persecutions. 1. Rome tol¬ 
erated and supported all religions; but, in return, she expected 
all inhabitants of the Empire to tolerate and support the re¬ 
ligion of the Empire, including the worship of the emperors. 
The Christians alone refused to do this, proclaiming that all 
worship but their own was sinful. 

2. Secret societies were feared and forbidden by the Empire, 
on political grounds. Even the enlightened Trajan instructed 
Pliny to forbid the organization of a firemen's company in a 

237 


Roman so¬ 
ciety and 
the early 
Christians 


Causes of 
persecution 


Secret 

societies 







“ Pacifists ” 


Slander 


Attitude of 
the govern¬ 
ment toward 
persecution 


238 RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 

large city of his province, because such associations were likely 
to become “factious assemblies.” But the church of that day 
was a vast, highly organized, widely diffused, secret society. 

3. In the third place, the Christians kept apart from most 
public amusements, either because those amusements were 
immoral, like the “gladiatorial games,” or because they were 
connected with festivals to heathen gods. This made Christians 
seem unsocial. Also, because Christ had preached peace, 
many Christians refused to join the legions, or to fight, if drafted. 
This was near to treason, inasmuch as a prime duty of the 
Roman world was to repel barbarism. Some of these extreme 
“pacifists” and “conscientious objectors” irritated their neigh¬ 
bors by even refusing to illuminate their houses or garland 
their portals in honor of national triumphs. 

4. Clean lives marked the early Christians, to a notable 
degree. Every sin was punished before the whole congregation. 
The church was a vast association for mutual helpfulness in 
pure living. Any member who was known to have worshiped 
pagan gods, or blasphemed, or borne false witness, was dis¬ 
missed from Christian fellowship. But, strangely enough, 
pagan society knew nothing of this side of the early church. The 
Jews accused the Christians of all sorts of crimes, and, partic¬ 
ularly, of horrible orgies in the secret “love-feasts” (communion 
suppers). If a child disappeared — lost or kidnapped by some 
slave-hunter — the rumor spread at once that it had been eaten 
by the Christians in their private feasts. Such accusations 
were accepted, carelessly, by Roman society, because the Chris¬ 
tian meetings were secret and because there had really been 
licentious rites in some religions from the East that Rome had 
been forced to crush. 

The first century, except for the horrors in Rome under 
Nero, afforded no persecution until its very close, and then 
only a slight one. Under Trajan we see spasmodic local perse¬ 
cutions, not instigated by the government. On the whole, 
during the second century, the Christians were legally subject 
to punishment; but the law against them was rarely enforced. 
















CONSTANTINE AND THEODOSIUS 


239 


Still it is well to remember that even then many noble men and 
women chose to die in torture rather than deny their faith. 

The third century was an age of anarchy and decay. The 
few able rulers strove strenuously to restore society to its an¬ 
cient order. One great obstacle to this restoration seemed 
to them to be this new religion, with .its hostility to Roman 
patriotism. This century, accordingly, was an age of definitely 
planned persecution. But by this time Christianity was too 
strong, and had come to count nobles and rulers in its ranks. 



Triumphal Arch of Constantine at Rome, 312 a.d., commemorating 
the victory of Milvian Bridge. 


In 305, Diocletian abdicated the throne (in the midst of the 
most terrible of all persecutions of the Christians); and for 
eight years civil war raged between claimants for the imperial 
power, more than one of them bidding for the favor of the 
growing church. In 312 a.d. at the battle of the Milvian 
Bridge in north Italy the mastery of the world fell to Constan¬ 
tine the Great. Constantine’s father, while ruler in Britain 
and Gaul, had been distinctly favorable to the Christians, 
and on the eve of his decisive battle Constantine adopted the 








240 


THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


Constantine 
makes 
Christianity 
a favored 
religion 


Causes 
and stages 


Edict of 
Milan, 313 
A.D. 


Licinius 
attempts 
to restore 
paganism 


Cross as a symbol upon his standards. (See Davis’ Readings 
for the story of his dream.) 

The Christians still were less than one tenth the population 
of the Empire; but they were energetic and enthusiastic; 
they were massed in the great cities which held the keys to 
political power; and tljey were admirably organized for united 
action. 

It is not likely that Constantine gave much thought to the 
truth of Christian doctrine, and we know that he did not prac¬ 
tice Christian virtues. (He put to death cruelly his wife and a 
son, and had a rival assassinated.) But he was wise enough 
to recognize the good policy of allying this rising power to himself 
against his rivals. He may have seen, also, in a broader and 
unselfish way, the folly of trying to restore the old pagan world, 
and have felt the need of establishing harmony between the 
government and this new power within the Empire, so as to 
utilize its strength instead of always combating it. So, in 313, 
a few months after Milvian Bridge, from his capital at Milan, 
Constantine issued the famous decree known as the Edict of 
Milan: “We grant to the Christians and to all others free 
choice to follow the mode of worship they may wish, in order 
that whatsoever divinity and celestial power may exist may be 
propitious to us and to all who live under our government.” 

This edict established religious toleration , and put an end 
forever to pagan persecution of the Christians. At a later 
time Constantine showed many favors to the church, granting 
money for its buildings, and exempting the clergy from taxa¬ 
tion (as was done with teachers in the schools). But, as head 
of the Roman state, he continued to make public sacrifices 
to the pagan gods. 

After ten years came a struggle between Constantine and a 
rival, Licinius, for power. This was also the final conflict 
between Christianity and paganism. The followers of the 
old faiths rallied around Licinius, and the victory of Constantine 
was accepted as a verdict in favor of Christianity. 

In 392, Theodosius the Great, who had already ruled for 
many years as emperor in the East, became sole emperor. He 




RISE OF HERESIES 


241 


made Christianity the only State religion, prohibiting all pagan 1 
worship on pain of death. In out-of-the-way corners of the 
Empire, paganism lived on for a century more; but in the more 
settled districts zealous worshipers of Christ destroyed the 


old temples and some¬ 
times put to death the 
worshipers of the old gods 
and teachers of the old 
philosophical schools. 

Almost at once, too, the 
Christians began to use 
force to prevent differ¬ 
ences of opinion among 
themselves. When the 
leaders tried to state just 
what they believed about 
difficult points, some vio¬ 
lent disputes arose. In 
such cases the views of 
the majority finally pre¬ 
vailed as the orthodox doc¬ 
trine, and the views of the 
minority became heresy — 
to be crushed out in 
blood, if need were. 

Most of the early here¬ 
sies arose from different 



Constantine’s Triumphal Column at 
Constantinople — a beautiful piece of 
porphyry originally bearing the em¬ 
peror’s statue in bronze on its summit 
(until 1105 a.d.) . Constantine removed 
the capital of the Empire from Rome to 
Byzantium, which he rebuilt with great 
magnificence and renamed Constanti¬ 
nople (“Constantine’s City ”). One of 
his motives, it is said, was to have a 
capital more easily Christianized than 

• • t , . Rome with her old pagan glories, 

opinions about the exact 

nature of Christ. Thus, back in Constantine’s time, Arius, 
a priest of Alexandria, taught that, while Christ was the divine 
Son of God, He was not equal to the Father. Athanasius, of 
the same city, asserted that Christ was not only divine and the 
Son of God, but that He and the Father were absolutely equal 


1 Pagan is from a Latin word meaning rustic. In like manner, later, the 
Christianized Germans called the remaining adherents of the old worship 
heathens (“heath-dwellers”). 


Persecu¬ 
tions by the 
Christians 


Early 

heresies 


The Nicene 
Creed 







242 


EARLY CHRISTIANITY 


in all respects, — “of the same substance’’ and “co-eternal.” 
The struggle waxed fierce and divided Christendom into oppos¬ 
ing camps. But Constantine desired union in the church. (If 
it split into hostile fragments, his political reasons for favoring 
it would be gone.) Accordingly, in 325, he summoned all 
the principal clergy of the* Empire to the first great council 
of the whole church, at Nicaea, in Asia Minor, and ordered 
them to come to agreement. Arius and x\thanasius in person 
led the fierce debate. In the end the majority sided with 
Athanasius. His doctrine, summed up in the Nicene Creed, 
became the orthodox creed of Christendom; and Arius and 
his followers (unless they recanted) were put to death or driven 
to seek refuge with the barbarians — many of whom they con¬ 
verted to Arian Christianity. 

The victory of Christianity no doubt was in part a com¬ 
promise, like every great change. Paganism reacted upon 
Christianity and made the church in some degree imperial 



and pagan. But there was immense gain. The new reli¬ 
gion mitigated slavery, built up a vast and beneficent system 
of charity, abolished the gladiatorial games and the “exposure” 
of infants, and lessened the terribly common practice of suicide 
— branding that act as one of the worst of crimes; and it 
purified and strengthened the souls of hosts of common men 
and women. 

The fourth century, even more than the third, was a time 
of intellectual decay. There were no poets and no new science, 




















PLATE XL 




Above. — Ruins of Constantine’s Basilica. 

Below-—Interior of the Same “Restored.” — The basilica (from a 
Greek word meaning the king’s judgment hall) became the favorite 
Roman form for law courts just before the Empire came in. When 
the Christians came to power, they adopted this type of building for 
their churches, and adapted many pagan structures for that purpose. 
Cf. Early Progress, p. 408. 



















PLATE XLI 




Above. — Ruins of “the Palace of the Caesars” on the Palatine Hill, 
built by Tiberius and Caligula. 

Below. —A “ Restoration ” of the Palace of the Caesars, by Benvenuti. 












RISE OF HERESIES 


243 


while even the old were neglected. Pagan poetry, beautiful as 
it was, was filled with immoral stories of the old gods, and the 
Christians feared contamination from it (as the Puritans of the 
seventeenth century did from the plays of Shakespeare). The 
contempt for pagan science had less excuse. The spherical 
form of the earth was well known to the Greeks (p. 146), but the 
early Christians demolished the idea, asking, “ If the earth be 
round, how can all men see Christ at his coming?” The church 
was soon to become the mother and sole protector of a new 
learning, but it bears part of the blame for the loss of the old. 

Review Exercise 

1. Add to the list of dates 180, 284, 325. 

2. Extend list of terms for fact drill. 

3. Memorize a characterization of the periods of the Empire; i.e . 

First and second centuries : peace, prosperity, good government. 
Third century : decline — material, political, intellectual. 

Fourth century : revival of imperial power; victory of the Chris¬ 
tian church; social and intellectual decline. 

Fifth and sixth (in advance): barbarian conquest. 



Roman Coins of the Empire. — Many have been found in the Orient. 


i 


Dislike 
and fear of 
pagan 
learning 










PART VI — ROMANO-TEUTONIC EUROPE 
400-1500 


The savage 
Teutons 


Government 
of village 
and tribe 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

MERGING OF ROMAN AND TEUTON, 378-800 A.D. 

I. FOUR CENTURIES OF CONFUSION 

East of the Rhine there had long roamed many “forest 
peoples,” whom the Romans called Germans, or Teutons. These 1 
barbarians were tall, huge of limb, white-skinned, flaxen-haired, ■ 
with fierce blue eyes. To the short dark-skinned races of 
Roman Europe, they seemed tawny giants. The tribes nearest 1 
the Empire had taken on a little civilization, and had begun 
to form large combinations under the rule of kings. The more 
distant tribes were still savage and unorganized. In general, 
they were not far above the level of the better North American 
Indians in our colonial period. 

The government of the Teutons is described for us by the 
Roman historian Tacitus. A tribe lived in villages scattered 
in forests. The village and the tribe each had its Assembly and 
its hereditary chief. The tribal chief, or king, was surrounded 
by his council of village chiefs. To quote Tacitus : 

“ On affairs of smaller moment, the chiefs consult; on those of greater 
importance, the whole community. . . . They assemble on stated 
days, either at the new or full moon. When they all think fit, they sit 
down armed. . . . Then the king, or chief, and such others as are 
conspicuous for age, birth, military renown, or eloquence, are heard, 
and gain attention rather from their ability to persuade than their 
authority to command. If a proposal displease, the assembly reject 
it by an inarticulate murmur. If it prove agreeable, they clash their 
javelins; for the most honorable expression of assent among them is 
the sound of arms.” (Cf. early Greek organization.) 

244 





FOUR CENTURIES OF CONFUSION 245 

The first Teutonic people to establish itself within the old 
Empire was the West Goths. These barbarians in 378 defeated 
and slew a Roman Emperor at Adrianople, almost under the 
walls of Constantinople, and then roamed and ravaged at 
will for a generation in the Balkan lands. In 410, they entered 
Italy and sacked Rome (just 800 years after the sack by the 
Gauls), and then moved west into Spain, where they found 
the Vandals — another Teuton race who had entered Spain 
through Gaul from across the Rhine. Driving the Vandals 
into Africa, the West Goths set up in Spain the first firm Teu¬ 
tonic kingdom. 

Meanwhile, other Teutons had begun to swarm across the 
Rhine. Finally, after frightful destruction, the East Goths 
; established themselves in Italy; the Burgundians, in the valley 
of the Rhone; the Angles and Saxons, in Britain; the Franks, 
in northern Gaul. This “wandering of the peoples” filled the 
fifth century and part of the sixth. 

These two terrible centuries brought on the stage also another 
new race, — the Slavs; and the opening of the following century 
brought Mohammedanism (pp. 253 ff.). But of these three forces, 

1 we are concerned almost alone with the Teutons. Mohammedan¬ 
ism, as we shall see, seized swiftly upon all the old historic 
ground in Asia and Africa; but these countries have had little 
touch since with our Western civilization. South of the Danube, 
Slavic tribes settled up almost to the walls of Constantinople, 
where the Roman Empire still maintained itself. Southeastern 
Europe became Slavic-Greek , just as Western Europe had be¬ 
come Teutonic-Roman. But, until very recently, Southeastern 
Europe has had little bearing upon the Western world. The 
two halves of Europe fell apart , with the Adriatic for the dividing 
line, — along the old cleavage between Latin and Greek civili¬ 
zations. In all the centuries since, human progress has come 
almost wholly from the Western Romano-Teutonic Europe — 
and from its recent offshoots. 


Invasion 
by the West 
Goths 


Other 

Teutonic 

invaders 


Slav Europe 
and Teu¬ 
tonic Europe 


The invasions brought overwhelming destruction upon this 




246 


WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D. 


The inva¬ 
sions over¬ 
throw the 
old civil¬ 
ization 


The “ Dark 

Ages,” 

400-800 


Survivals of 
Roman 
civilization 
in towns 
and in the 
church 


Western world, — the most complete catastrophe that ever 
befell a great civilized society. Civilization, it is true, had been 
declining before they began; but they tremendously accelerated 
the movement, and prevented any revival of the old culture 
in the West. 

And when the invaders had entered into possession, and 
so ceased to destroy, two new causes of decline appeared : 
(1) The new ruling classes were densely ignorant. They cared 
nothing for the survivals of literature and science. Few of them 
could read, or write even their names. Much of the old civili¬ 
zation was allowed to decay because they could not under¬ 
stand its use. (2) The language of everyday speech was grow¬ 
ing away from the literary language in which all the remains of 
the old knowledge were preserved. The language of learning 
became “dead.” It was known only to the clergy, and to 
most of them at this period very imperfectly. 

•The fifth and sixth centuries brought the Teuton into the 
Roman world; the seventh and eighth centuries fused Roman 
and Teuton elements into a new “Western Europe.” For 
the whole four hundred years of these “Dark Ages” (400-800), 
Europe remained a dreary scene of violence, lawlessness, and 
ignorance. The old Roman schools disappeared, and classical 
literature seemed to be extinct. There was no tranquil leisure, 
and therefore no study. There was little security, and there¬ 
fore little work. The Franks and Goths were learning the rudi¬ 
ments of civilized life; but the Latins were losing all but the 
rudiments — and they seemed to lose faster than the Teutons 
gained. 

But after all, the invasions did not uproot civilization. The 
conquests were made by small numbers, and, outside Britain, 
they did not greatly change the character of the population. 
The conquerors settled among ten or fifty times their own 
numbers. At first they were the rulers, and almost the only 
large land-owners. But the towns , so far as they survived, re¬ 
mained Roman y and, almost unnoticed by the ruling classes, 
they preserved some parts of the old culture and handicrafts. 
The old population, too, for a long time furnished all the clergy. 



-PLATE XLII 



Tomb of Hadrian (locate on map, p. 230). When the Vandals from 
Africa (p. 245) sacked Rome (455 a.d.), this structure was used as a 
citadel, and the marble statues that originally crowned it were hurled 
down on the barbarians. In strange contrast with this ornate mausoleum 
are the simple and dainty lines Hadrian addressed to his soul as he felt 
death upon him: 

“ Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one. 

Guest and partner of my clay, 

Whither wilt thou hie away, 

Pallid one, rigid one, naked one, — 

Never to play again, never to play ? M 

































































THE JUSTINIAN CODE 


247 



From this class — the sole possessors of the art of writing and 
keeping records — the Teutonic lords had to draw secretaries 
and confidential officers; and by these advisers they were grad¬ 
ually persuaded to adopt many customs of the old civilization. 

Most important of all, the church itself lived on much in the 
old way. Necessarily it suffered somewhat in the general deg¬ 
radation of the age; but, on the whole, it protected the weak, 
and stood for peace, industry, and right living. In the darkest 


A Roman Temple as It Survives To-day in Ntmes in Southern France 
(Maison Carree). 

of those dark centuries there were great numbers of priests and 
monks inspired with zeal for righteousness and love for men. 

The preservation of Roman law we owe mainly to a source 
outside Western Europe. The Roman Empire lived on in part 
of Eastern Europe and in Asia, with its capital at Constantinople. 
Cut off from Latin Europe, that Empire now grew more and 
more Greek and Oriental, and after 500 a.d. we usually speak of 
it as “the Greek Empire.” 

In the sixth century, after long decline, the Empire fell for 
a time to a capable ruler, Justinian the Great (527-565), whose 
most famous work was a codification of the Roman law. In 


The 

“ Greek 
Empire ” 


The 

Justinian 

Code 













248 


WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D. 


Lombards 
and Greeks 
in Italy 


Teutonic 

law 


the course of centuries, that law had become an intolerable 
maze. Now a commission of able lawyers put the whole mass 
into a new form, marvelously compact, clear, and orderly. 
Justinian also reconquered Italy for the Empire, and so the code 
was established in that land. Thence, through the church, 
and some centuries later through a new class of lawyers, it 
spread over the West. 

Justinian’s conquest of Italy had another result less happy. 
His generals destroyed a promising kingdom of the East Goths 
in Italy. Then (568), immediately after the great emperor’s 

death, a new German people, the 
savage Lombards , swarmed into the 
peninsula. Their chief kingdom 
was in the Po valley, which we 
still call Lombardy; but various 
Lombard “dukedoms” were scat¬ 
tered also in other parts. The 
Empire kept (1) the “Exarchate 
of Ravenna” on the Adriatic; (2) Rome, with a little territory 
about it; and (3) the extreme south. Thus Italy, the middle 
land for which Roman and Teuton had struggled, was at last 
divided between them and shattered into fragments in the 'process. 

When the barbarians came into the Empire, their law was only 
unwritten custom. Much of it remained so, especially in 
Britain. But, under Roman influence, the conquerors soon 
put parts of their law into written codes. Two common features 
of these codes throw interesting sidelights on the times. 

1. Offenses were atoned for by money-payments, varying from 
a small amount for cutting off the joint of a finger, to the wergeld 
(man-money), or payment for taking a man’s life. 

2. When a man wished to prove himself innocent, or another 
man guilty, he did not try to bring evidence, as we do. Proof 
consisted in an appeal to God to show the right. 

Thus in the trial by compurgation, the accuser and accused 
swore solemnly to their statements, and each was backed by 
“ compurgators,” — not witnesses, but persons who swore they 



A Silver Coin of Justinian. 






















After 507 the Kingdom of the West Goths in Ga % 
















































limited, to a ftnmJl Hmith e .m .ntcip (Septioiania) 












































































. 



























. 


































I 

























. 









TEUTONIC CODES OF LAW 


249 




believed their man was telling the truth. To swear falsely 
was to invite the divine vengeance, as in the boyish survival, — 
“ Cross my heart and hope 
to die.” 

In trial by ordeal, the 
accused tried to clear him¬ 
self by being thrown bound 
into water. Or he plunged 
his arm into boiling water, 
or carried red-hot iron a 
certain distance ; and if his 
flesh was uninjured, when 
examined some days later, 
he was declared innocent. 

All these ordeals were un¬ 
der the charge of the 
clergy and were preceded 
by sacred exercises. Such 
tests could be made, 
too, by deputy: hence 


Trial by Combat — the religious prelimi¬ 
nary. Each champion is making oath 
of the justice of his cause. From a fif¬ 
teenth-century manuscript. 


our 


Trial by Combat — companion piece to 
the preceding cut. 


phrase to “go through fire 
and water” for a friend. 

Among the fighting class, 
the favorite trial came to 
be the trial by combat, — a 
judicial duel in which God 
was expected to “show the 
right.” 

The Teutons introduced 
once more a system of 
growing law. Codification 
preserved the Roman law, 
but crystallized it. Teu¬ 
tonic law, despite its codes, 
remained for a long time 
crude and unsystematic; 
but it contained possibili¬ 
ties of further growth. The 


Trial by 
ordeal 


Growing 

law 





























2oO 


WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D. 


The 

conquest 

modifies 

Teutonic 

institutions 


importance of this fact has been felt mainly in the English 
“Common Law,” the basis of our American legal system. 

The conquest modified the political institutions of the con¬ 
querors in many ways. Three changes call for attention. 

1. The Teutonic kings became more absolute. At first they 
were little more than especially honored military chiefs, at the 
head of rude democracies. In the conquests, they secured 
large shares of confiscated land, so that they could reward their 
supporters and build up a strong personal following. More- 



Seventh Century Villa (in wood) in North Gaul, as “ restored ” by Par- 
mentier. The palisades inclose, it will be noticed, not only the dwellings 
for the human inhabitants (with a lofty watch tower), but also vegetable • 
gardens and extensive barns for cattle. 


over, the Roman idea of absolute power in the head of the state 
had its influence. (With all its excellences, the Roman law was 
imbued with the principle of despotism. A favorite maxim 
was, — “ What the prince wills has the force of law.”) 

2. A new nobility of service appeared. The king rewarded his 
most trusted followers with grants of lands, and made them 
rulers (counts and dukes) over large districts. 

3. The assemblies of freemen decreased in importance. They 





EVERYDAY LIFE 


251 


survived in England as occasional “ Folkmoots,” and in the 
Frankish kingdom as “Mayfields”; but they shrank into gath¬ 
erings of nobles and officials. 

Everyday life in the seventh century was harsh and mean. Life in 

The Teutonic conquerors disliked the close streets of a Roman Western 

Europe, 

town; but the villa, the residence of a Roman country gentle- 700 A,D. 
man, was the Roman institution which they could most nearly 
appreciate. The new Teutonic kings (and their nobles also) 
lived not in town palaces, but in rude but spacious wooden 
dwellings on extensive farmsteads in the midst of forests. 

Population had shrunken terribly, even since the worst times Population 
of the Roman Empire. In the north, most towns had been shrunken 
destroyed. Those that were rebuilt (on a small scale), sur¬ 
rounded by rude palisades, were valued chiefly for refuge, and 
for convenient nearness to a church or cathedral. (In the south, 
it is true, the old cities lived on, with a considerable degree of 
the old Roman city life.) 

Everywhere, the great majority of the people were the Life of the 
poor folk who tilled the land for neighboring masters. Most poor 
of these toilers lived in mud hovels, or in cabins of rough 
boards, without floors and with roofs covered with reeds or 
straw. At the best, little more of their produce remained 
to them than barely enough to support life; they were con¬ 
stantly subject to the arbitrary will of rough masters; and at 
frequent intervals they suffered terribly from pestilence and 
famine. 

In the old East, holiness was believed to be related to with- Monasti- 
drawal from the world and to disregard for pleasure and for cism 
natural instincts, even love for mother, wife, and child. This 
unnatural tendency invaded Eastern Christianity, and, in the 
Egyptian and Syrian deserts, there arose a class of tens of thou¬ 
sands of Christian hermits, who strove each to save his own soul 
by tormenting his body. * 

In some cases these fugitives from society united into small 
societies with common rules of life; and in the latter part of 
the fourth century the idea of religious communities was trans- 




Rise of 
the Franks 


252 WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D. 

planted to the West, where the long anarchy following the in¬ 
vasions made such a life peculiarly inviting. 

European monasticism, however, differed widely from its 

model in the East. The monks 
of the West, within their quiet 
walls, wisely sought escape 
from temptation, not in idle¬ 
ness, but in active and in¬ 
cessant work. Their motto 
was, “To work is to pray.” 
In the seventh century , the ma¬ 
jority of cultured and refined 
men and women in Western 
Europe lived within monastic 
walls. Monks did not go out 
into the world to save jt; but 
their doors were open to all 
who came for help. For cen¬ 
turies of violence and brutal¬ 
ity, the thousands of monas¬ 
teries that dotted Western Eu¬ 
rope were the only almhouses, 
inns, asylums, hospitals, and 
schools, and the sole refuge of learning. 

II. FRANKS, MOHAMMEDANS, AND POPES 

During the two centuries of fusion (p. 246), two organizing 
powers grew up in Europe — the Frankish state and the Papacy; 
and one great danger appeared — Mohammedanism. 

The growth of the Frankish state was due mainly to Clovis, 
a ferocious and treacherous Teutonic savage of shrewd intellect. 
In 481, Clovis became king of one of the several little tribes of 
Franks on the lower Rhine. Fifty years later, thanks to a long- 
continued policy of war, assassination, and perfidy, his sons 
ruled an empire comprising nearly all modern France, the Neth¬ 
erlands, and much of western Germany. 

This new Frankish empire remained for three centuries not 



The Abbey of Citeaux. — From a 
miniature in a twelfth century 
manuscript. (Abbey is the name 
for a large monastery.) Note the 
grain fields in the background, which 
were largely cultivated by the 
monks themselves. 




























a U*$oj\’ 




" rl ^b^' 


'lH‘*'i'luiir 


' '*- 1>A 

/ ~w' ?ff 

<r \ 

* ' S ^V v ^n / V S . Orf'H 




Anns'? 



































































































































































































































CLOVIS AND THE FRANKS 


253 


only the greatest power in Western Europe hut practically the only 
power. The Gothic state in Spain was in decay. Italy was in 
fragments. England (Britain) remained a medley of small 
warring states (p. 268). Germany, east of the Frankish empire, 
held only savage and unorganized tribes. For two of these 
centuries the family of Clovis kept the throne, — a story of 
greed, treachery, and murder, and, toward the end, of dismal, 
swinish indolence. The last of these kings were mere phantom 
rulers, known as “Do-nothings,” and all real power was held 
by a mayor of the palace. The empire of the Franks seemed 
about to dissolve in anarchy. Especially did German Bavaria 
and Roman Aquitaine attempt complete independence under 
native dukes. But about the year 700 a great mayor, Charles, 
known as Martel (“the Hammer”), by crushing blows right 
and left began to restore union and order. 

And none too soon. For the Mohammedans now attacked 
Europe. Except for Martel’s long pounding, there would 
have been no Christian power able to withstand their onset — 
and Englishmen and Americans to-day might be readers of 
the Mohammedan Koran instead of the Christian Bible. 

A century after Clovis built up the empire of the Franks, a 
better man, out of less promising material, built a mighty 
power in Arabia. Until that time, Arabia had had little to do 
with human progress. It was mainly desert, with strips of 
tillable land near the Red Sea, — where also there were a few 
small cities. Elsewhere the Arabs were wandering shepherds, — 
poor and ignorant, dwelling in black camel’s hair tents, living 
from their sheep and by robbing their neighbors, and worshiping 
sticks and stones. The inspiring force that was to lift them to 
a higher life, and fuse them into a world-conquering nation, 
was the fiery enthusiasm of Mohammed. 

Mohammed was born at Mecca about 570. He never learned 
to read; but his speech was forceful, and his manner pleasing 
and stately. He was given to occasional periods of religious 
ecstasy, praying alone in the desert for days at a time (as in¬ 
deed many Arabs did); and in such a lonely vigil, when he was 


The “ Do- 
nothing ” 
kings 


The 

Frankish 
state re¬ 
united by 
Martel 


Arabia 

before 

Mohammed 


Moham¬ 

med, 

570-632 


254 


WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D. 


Moral 

teachings of 
Mohammed 


The 
Hegira, 
622 A.D. 


Mohammed 
makes con¬ 
verts by the 
sword 


Rapid 
growth of 
the faith 


The 

Saracens 

attack 

Europe 


a respected merchant forty years old, God appeared to him 
(he said) in a wondrous vision, revealing to him a higher religion. 
The Koran (see extracts in Ogg’s Source Book), the “sacred 
book” made up of his teachings, taught a higher morality than 
the Arabs had known (much of it similar to Jewish teachings, 
with which he had become acquainted in his travels as a mer¬ 
chant) ; but it accepted also certain evil customs of the time, 
such as slavery and polygamy. 

For twelve years the new faith grew slowly. A few friends 
accepted Mohammed at once as a prophet; but the bulk of 
his fellow townsfolk jeered at the claim, and when he con¬ 
tinued to order them to put away their stone idols, they drove 
him from Mecca. This flight is “the Hegira ” (622 a.d.). 

But Mohammed converted the tribes of the desert, and then 
took up the sword. His fierce warriors proved themselves 
almost irresistible, conquering many a time against^ overwhelm¬ 
ing odds. They felt sure that to every man there was an ap¬ 
pointed time of death, which he could neither delay nor hasten, 
and they rejoiced in death in battle as the surest admission to 
the joys of Paradise. 

Before his death, ten years after the Hegira, Mohammed 
was master of all Arabia. Eighty years later, his followers 
stood victorious upon the Oxus, the Indus, the Black Sea, the 
Atlantic, — rulers of a realm more extensive than that of Rome 
at its height. Within the span of one human life, the Moham¬ 
medans had won all the old Asiatic empire of Alexander the 
Great, and all North Africa besides; and drawing together the 
sweeping horns of their mighty crescent, they were already 
trying to enter Europe from both east and west across the 
narrow straits of the Hellespont and Gibraltar. 

The most formidable attacks wore themselves away (672 and 
717) about the walls of the City of Constantine; but in 711 
the Arabs did enter Spain and were soon masters of that penin¬ 
sula, except for remote mountain fastnesses. Then, pouring 
across the Pyrenees, the Mohammedan flood spread over Gaul 
to the Loire. Now, indeed, it “seemed that the crescent was 
about to round to the full.” 


PLATE XLII1 




Above. —The Damascus Gate in the Walls of Jerusalem To-day — as 
rebuilt by the Saracens after their conquest in the seventh century. 

Below. — A View of Jerusalem To-day from Mt. Scopus where Titus 
encamped when he besieged the city (p. 215). The Saracenic walls, of 
which one gate is shown above, can be clearly seen. After the Arab con¬ 
quest the city remained in Mohammedan hands, except for about one 
hundred years during the Crusades (pp. 294-297), until the closing days 
of the World War. 





PLATE XLIV 



The Court of Lions in the Palace of Alhambra at Granada, Spain. 











THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIL 


255 


But the danger completed the reunion of the Frankish state. 
The duke of Aquitaine, long in revolt against Frankish rule, 
fled to the camp of Charles Martel for aid against the Moham¬ 
medan ; and, in 732, in the plains near Tours, the “ Hammer 
of the Franks” with his close array of mailed infantry met 
the Arab host. From dawn to dark, on a Saturday in October, 
the gallant, turbaned horsemen of the Saracens hurled them¬ 
selves in vain against the Franks’ sfern wall of iron. At night 
the surviving Arabs stole silently from their camp and fled 
back behind the shelter of the Pyrenees. 

This Battle of Tours, just one hundred years after Moham¬ 
med’s death, is the high-water mark of the Saracen invasion. 
A few years later, the Mohammedan world, like Christendom, 
split into rival empires, and the critical danger to Western civili¬ 
zation for the time passed away. 

The Frankish state had saved Europe from Africa. Next 
it allied to itself the papacy. We must now trace the rise of 
that power. 

As the first Christian missionaries spread out beyond Judea 
and came to a new province, they naturally went first to the 
chief city there. Thus the capital of the province became the 
seat of the first church in the district. From this mother so¬ 
ciety, churches spread to the other cities of the province, and 
from each city there sprouted outlying parishes. 

At the head of each parish was a priest (assisted usually by 
deacons and subdeacons to care for the poor). The head of a 
city church was a bishop (overseer), with supervision over the 
rural churches of the neighborhood. The bishop of the mother 
church in the capital city exercised great authority over the other 
bishops of the province. He became known as archbishop 
or metropolitan ; and it became customary for him to summon the 
other bishops to a central council. 

The more powerful of these archbishops (known as patriarchs) 
gradually won authority over others; and by the fourth cen¬ 
tury all the East was divided among the four patriarchates 
of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Constantinople, while 


Battle of 
Tours, 
732 A.D. 


Claims of 
the Roman 
papacy to 
headship 


256 


WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D. 


Rome’s 
advantages 
in the 
Western 
church 


The “Great 
Schism ” 
leaves 
Rome 
mistress 
in the 
Western 
church 


all the West came under the authority of the bishop of Rome. 

Very early the last of these had put forth a vigorous claim — 
as spiritual successor to St. Peter, alleged founder of the 
church at Rome — to supremacy over all the Christian church. 
Rome had advantages that helped to make good this claim. 
(1) Men thought of Rome as the world-capital. (2) The Latin 
half of the Empire had no other church founded by an Apostle; 
nor did it contain any other great city : Rome’s rivals were all 
east of the Adriatic. (3) The decline of the Roman Empire 
in the West, after the barbarian invasions, left the pope 1 less 
liable to interference from the imperial government than the 
Eastern bishops were. (4) A long line of remarkable popes, by 
their wise statesmanship and their missionary zeal, confirmed 
the position of Rome as head of the Western churches. 

Even in the West, however, until about 700 a.d., most men 
looked upon the bishop of Rome only as one among five great 
patriarchs, though the most loved and trusted one. But in the 
eighth century Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch fell to the 
Saracens; and, soon afterward, remaining Christendom split 
into rival Latin and Greek churches , grouped respectively around 
Rome and Constantinople. 

This i( Great Schism” followed the ancient lines of partition 
between the Latin and Greek cultures; but the occasion for actual 
separation was a dispute over the use of images (the “icono¬ 
clast,” or image-breaking, question). An influential party in 
the Greek Empire desired to abolish the use of images, which, 
they felt, the ignorant were apt to degrade from symbols into 
idols. A great reforming emperor, Leo the Isaurian, put him¬ 
self at the head of the movement, and ordered all images re¬ 
moved from the churches. The West believed in their use as 
aids to worship; and the pope forbade obedience to the order 
of the emperor. The result was the separation of Christendom 
into two halves, never since united. 

This left Rome the unquestioned head of the Latin church, 
the spiritual lord of Western Europe. At the same time, too, 

1 The name pope (“papa”) was at first only a term of affectionate respect 
(“father”). It did not become an official term until 1085 . 


POPES AND FRANKS 


257 


the pope was growing into a temporal 1 sovereign over a small state 
in Italy. In the break-up of that peninsula (p. 248), the imperial 
governor kept his capital at Ravenna, safe amid the marshes 
of the Adriatic coast. Thus he was soon cut off, by Lombard 
states, from Rome, which with neighboring territory still be¬ 
longed to the Empire. Bishops always held considerable 
civil authority. This new condition left the bishop of Rome 



Cloisters of St. John Lateran. This church stands on the site of the 
first papal church. It adjoins the Lateran palace, the official residence 
of the popes until 1377. 


the only lieutenant of the Empire in his isolated district; and 
the difficulty of communication with Constantinople (and the 
weakness of the emperors) made him in practice an independent 
ruler. After the split between Greek and Latin churches, 
this independence was openly avowed. 

At once, however, the new papal state was threatened with 
conquest by the neighboring Lombards, who already had seized 

1 Temporal, in this sense, is used to apply to matters of this world, in 
contrast to the spiritual matters of the world eternal. 


The pope 
becomes 
a temporal 
prince 


Popes and 
Lombards 





258 


WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D 


Alliance of 
Franks and 
papacy 


the Exarchate of Ravenna. The popes appealed to the Franks 
for aid against Lombard attack. The Frankish mayors needed 
papal sanction for their own plans just then; and so the two or¬ 
ganizing forces of Western Europe joined hands. 

The Frankish mayor now was Pippin the Short, son of Charles 
Martel. This ruler felt that he bore the burdens of kingship, 
and he wished to take to himself also its name and dignity. 
Such a step needed powerful sanction. So, in 750, Pippin sent 
an embassy to the pope to ask whether this was “ a good state 
of things in regard to the kings of the Franks.’’ The pope 
replied, “It seems better that he who has the power should 
be king rather then he who is falsely called so.” Thereupon 
Pippin shut up the last shadow-king of the house of Clovis 
in a monastery, and himself assumed the crown. 

A little later, Pope Stephen visited the Frankish court and 
solemnly consecrated Pippin king. All earlier Teutonic kings 
had held their kingship by will of their people; but Stephen 
anointed Pippin, as the old Hebrew prophets did the Hebrew 
kings. This began for European monarchs their “sacred” 
character as “the Lord’s anointed.” On his part, Pippin 
made Lombardy a tributary state and gave to the pope that 
territory which the Lombard king had recently seized from 
Ravenna. This “Donation of Pippin” created the modern 
principality of “the Papal States” —to last until 1870. 

For Further Reading. — The closing numbers of Davis’ Readings, 
II, contain excellent source material on this period. See, too, Ogg’s 
Source Book, especially for Mohammedanism. If time is found for 
other library work, the following books are among the mqst useful: 
Emerton’s Introduction to the Middle Ages, chs. i-vii; Hodgkin’s 
Theodoric the Goth; Muir’s Mohammed; Sargeant’s The Franks. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


CHARLEMAGNE’S EMPIRE 


“ A patch of light in the vast gloom. ” 

Pippin, King of the Franks, died in 768, and was succeeded 
by his son Karl the Great, known in his own day as Carolus 
Magnus, and best known to us by the French form Charlemagne. 

Charlemagne was a statesman rather than a fighter; but 
he found his realm still threatened by barbarian Germans on 
the east and by Mohammedan Moors on 
the south, and his long reign of a half 
century was filled with ceaseless border 
wars. He thrust back the Saracens to 
the Ebro, redeeming a strip of Spain; 
and, in a long pounding of thirty years, 
he subdued the heathen Saxons amid the 
marshes and trackless wilderness between 
the lower Rhine and the Elbe. All this 
district, so long a peril to the civilized 
world, was colonized by Frankish pioneers 
and planted with Christian churches. In 
such bloody and violent ways Charlemagne 
laid the foundation for modern Germany. 

Other foes engaged energy the great king 
would rather have given to reconstruc¬ 
tion. The vassal Lombard king attacked 
the pope. After fruitless expostulation, Charlemagne marched 
into Italy, confirmed Pippin’s “Donation,” and at Pavia 
placed the Iron Crown of Lombardy upon his own head, as 
King of Italy. And when restless Bavaria once more rebelled, 
that district was at last thoroughly subdued. 

Thus Visigoth in northern Spain, Burgund in south Gaul, 
259 



Seal of Charlemagne. 
(This is the nearest 
approach we have to 
a likeness of Charle¬ 
magne. The so-called 
“pictures” of Charle¬ 
magne in many books 
are purely imagina¬ 
tive, by artists of later 
centuries.) 


Charle¬ 

magne, 

768-814 

Repulse of 
barbarian 
danger: 
civilization 
expanded 




260 


THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 


“ Buffer ” 
states on 
the east 


“ Emperor 
of the 
Romans/' 
800 A.D. 


The two 
Empires 


Lombard in Italy, and the more newly “ civilized ” Bavarian 
and Saxon in Germany, along with the dominant Franks —- 
all the surviving Teutonic peoples except the Norsemen in the 
Scandinavian lands and the Angles and Saxons in Britain — 
were fused in one Christian Romano-Teutonic state. Beyond 
this “Western Europe,” to the east, stretched away savage 
and heathen Avars and Slavs, still hurling themselves from 
time to time against the barriers of the civilized world. Charle¬ 
magne made no attempt to embody these inharmonious elements 
in his realm; but, toward the close, he did reduce the first line 
of peoples beyond the Elbe and the Danube into tributary states 
to serve as buffers against their untamed brethren farther east. 

But no mere “King of the Franks” could hold in lasting alle¬ 
giance the minds of Visigoth, Lombard, Bavarian, and Saxon, 
and of the old Roman populations among whom they dwelt. 
And so Charlemagne now strengthened his authority over his 
empire by reviving in the West the dignity and magic name of the 
Roman Empire, ruling at once from the old world-capital, Rome 
on the Latin Tiber, and from his new capital, the German 
Aachen near the Rhine. 

There was already a “Roman Emperor” at Constantinople, 
whose authority, in theory, extended over all Christendom; 
but just at this time, Irene, the empress-mother, put out the 
eyes of her son, Constantine VI, and seized the imperial power. 
To most minds, East and West, it seemed monstrous that a 
wicked woman should pretend to the scepter of the world ; and, 
on Christmas Day, 800 a.d., as Charlemagne at Rome knelt in 
prayer at the altar, Pope Leo III placed upon his head a gold 
crown, saluting him “Charles Augustus, Emperor of the Ro¬ 
mans.” This deed was at once ratified by the enthusiastic 
acclaim of the multitude without. 

In theory, Rome had chosen a successor to Constantine VI, 
just deposed at Constantinople. In actual fact, however, 
the deed of Leo and Charlemagne divided the Christian world into 
two rival empires, each calling itself the Roman Empire. After a 
time men had to recognize this fact, — as they had to recognize 








EUROPE 

IN THE TIME OF 

CHARLES THE GREAT 
814 

ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE WEST ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE EAST 

Frankish. State before Charlemagne 
Charlemagne’s Additions 
Tributary States 



MOHAMMEDANS: 



Emirate of Cordova 



Caliphate of Bagdad 



Longitude 5 


SCALE OF MILES 

6 50 100 200 300 ioo 600 

- 1 _ ( 


West 


0 


10 Longitude 15 


East 


























































































% 









’"••‘VV, 




WwA/A 


Y/////////////. 

///////7////yi 


V//////A 


V/////A/////////. 


vM 


WAY* 


from 












































































































































































































































































































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* 

; 

* 

, 























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CIVILIZATION REORGANIZED 


261 



that there were two branches of the Christian church; but 
to the men of the West, their Empire, like their church, remained 
the only legitimate one. In plain fact, neither Empire was 
really Roman. The Eastern grew more and more Oriental, and 
the Western more Teutonic. 

The glory and prosperity of the old Empire had not been 
restored with its name. To accomplish that was to be the work 
of centuries more. In 800 , the West was still ignorant and 
wretched. Roads had fallen to ruin, and murderous brigands 
infested those that re¬ 
mained. Money was 
little known, and 
trade hardly existed. 

Almost the only in¬ 
dustry was the primi¬ 
tive agriculture of the 

serfs. Even Charle- Silver Coin of Charlemagne. The obverse 
. . . side shows the Latin form of his name. Note 

magne could, raise no the ruc leness of the engraving compared with 
“taxes.” He exacted that of Justinian’s coin on p. 248, or older 
C ( . . coins, pp- 162, 177, 243, etc. 

service m person in 

war and peace; and the other support of his court came mainly 
from the produce of the royal farms scattered through the 
kingdom. Partly to make sure of this revenue in the cheapest 
way, and more to attend to the wants of his vast realms, 
Charlemagne and his court were always on the move. No 
commercial traveler of to-day travels more faithfully, or dreams 
of encountering such hardship on the road. 

To keep in closer touch with popular feeling in all parts of 
the kingdom, Charlemagne made use of the old Teutonic assem¬ 
blies in fall and spring. All freemen could attend. Sometimes, 
especially when war was to be decided upon, this “Mayfield” 
gathering comprised the bulk of the Frankish nation. At other 
times it was made up only of nobles and churchmen. To these 
assemblies were read the capitularies, or collections of laws, 
decreed by the king. ( Lawmaking was in the hands of the king. 
At the most, the assemblies could only bring to bear upon him 
mildly the force of public opinion.) 


Poverty 
and misery 
of Europe, 
8oo A.D. 


The “ May- 
fields ” of 
the Franks 



Attempts 
to revive 
learning 


The world 
of 800 A.D 


262 THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 

Charlemagne made brave attempts also to revive learning. 
He never learned to write, but he spoke and read Latin, and 
he understood some Greek. For his age he was an educated 
man; and he wished earnestly to make more learning possible 
for others. Nearly every noble, and many of the clergy, were 
densely ignorant. The only tools to work with were poor. 
There seemed no place to begin. Still much was done. For 
teachers Charlemagne sought out learned men in South Italy, 
where Roman civilization best survived, and he opened schools 
in monasteries and at bishops’ seats for the instruction of all 
children who could come to them — even the children of serfs. 
Some of these schools, as at Tours and Orleans, lived on through 
the Middle Ages. 1 

In the early part of the eighth century there were four great 
forces contending for Western Europe, — the Greek Empire, 
the Saracens, the Franks, and the papacy. By the year 800, 
Charles Martel and Charles the Great had excluded the first 
two and had fused the other two into the revived Roman Empire. 
For centuries more, this Roman Empire was to be one of the 
most important forces in Europe. Barbarism and anarchy 
were again to break in, after the death of the great Charles; 
but the imperial idea, to which he had given new life, was to 
be for ages the inspiration of the best minds as they strove 
against anarchy in behalf of order and progress. 

Charlemagne himself towers above all other men from the fifth 
century to the fifteenth — easily the greatest figure of a thou¬ 
sand years. He stands for five mighty movements. He widened 
the area of civilization, created one great Romano-Teutonic 
state, revived the Roman Empire in the West for the out¬ 
ward form of this state, reorganized church and society, and 
began a revival of learning. He wrought wisely to combine 
the best elements of Roman and of Teutonic society into a 
new civilization. In his Empire were fused the various streams 

1 The term “Middle Ages” is used for the centuries from 400 to 1500, or 
from the Teutonic invasions to the discovery of America. These centuries 
cover that “Medieval” period which intervenes between the distinctly 
Ancient and the distinctly Modern period. 





AND OUR HERITAGE 


263 


of influence which the earlier world contributed to our modern 
world. 

The scene of history had shifted to the West once more, and 
this time it had shrunken in size. Some Teutonic districts 
outside the old Roman world had been added; but vast areas 
of the Roman territory itself had been abandoned. The 
Euphrates, the Nile, the Eastern Mediterranean, all Asia with 
Eastern Europe to the Adriatic, and Africa with Western 
Europe to the Pyrenees, were gone. The Mediterranean, the 
central highway of the old Roman world, had become an ill- 
defended moat between Christian Europe and Mohammedan 
Africa; and its ancient place was taken over, as well as might 
be, by the Rhine and the North Sea. 


Scene of 
“ history ” 
shifted to 
“ Western 
Europe ” 


We can now sum up the inheritance with which “ Western 
Europe” began. 

Through Rome the Western peoples were the heirs of Greek Our debt to 
mind and Oriental hand, including most of those mechanical ^^J lcient 
arts which had been built up in dim centuries by Egyptian, 
Babylonian, and Phoenician; and though much of this inherit¬ 
ance, both intellectual and material, was forgotten or neglected 
for hundreds of years, most of it was finally to be recovered. 

Rome also passed on Christianity and its church organization. 

Rome herself had contributed (1) a universal language, which 
was long to serve as a common medium of learning and inter¬ 
course for all the peoples of Western Europe; (2) Roman law; 

(3) municipal institutions, in southern Europe; (4) the impe¬ 
rial idea — the conception of one, lasting, universal, supreme au¬ 
thority, to which the world owed obedience. 

The fresh blood of the Teutons 1 reinvigorated the old races, 
and so provided the men who for centuries were to do the 


1 The use of the words German and Teuton in the above treatment calls 
for a word of caution. The mingling of Teutonic and Roman elements 
in our civilization took place not in Germany but in the lands we call Eng¬ 
land, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. The people who brought the 
Teutonic contributions into those lands were not the ancestors of the mod¬ 
ern Germans — any more than were other Teutons, like the Danes and 
Swedes, who never entered Germany. 


264 


THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 


world’s work. The Teutons contributed, too, certain definite 
ideas and institutions: (1) a new sense of personal inde¬ 
pendence; (2) a bond of personal loyalty between chieftain 
and follower, in contrast with the old Roman loyalty to the 
state; (3) a new chance for democracy, especially in the popular 
assemblies of different grades in England. 

Out of Roman and Teutonic elements there had already de¬ 
veloped a new serf organization of labor; a new nobility; and 
a new Romano-Teutonic kingship — and now there was to grow 
out of them a new feudalism (ch. xxx). 

For Further Reading. —Ogg’s Source Book , ch. x; Hodgkin’s 
Charles the Great; Davis’ Charlemagne; Masterman’s Dawn of Me¬ 
dieval Europe. 



The Fields of Ancient History. 






















. 




























. 
















■ 

























/ 



























































































Danube 


^^5 


3UOl(H 










































CHAPTER XXX 
THE FEUDAL AGE, 800-1300 

I. THE NEW BARBARIAN ATTACK 

“From the fury of the Northmen, 0 Lord, deliver us.” — Prayer in 
Church Service of Tenth Century. 

Charlemagne died in 814, and his empire did not long outlive 
him. His brilliant attempt to bring Western Europe into order 
and union was followed by a dismal period of reaction and 
turmoil, while his ignoble descendants sought only to see who 
could grab the largest slices of the realm. The most important 
of these selfish contests closed in 843 with the Treaty of Verdun. 

This treaty begins the map of modern Europe. Lothair, 
Charlemagne’s eldest grandson, held the title Emperor, and 
so he was now given North Italy and a narrow strip of land 
from Italy to the North Sea — that he might keep the two 
imperial capitals, Rome and Aachen. The rest of the Empire, 
lying east and west of this middle strip, was broken into two 
kingdoms for Lothair’s two brothers. 

The eastern kingdom was purely German. In the western, 
the Teutonic rulers were being absorbed rapidly into the older 
Roman and Gallic populations, to grow into France. Lothair’s 
unwieldy “Middle Europe” proved the weakest of the three. 
Italy fell away at once. Then the northern portion, part 
French, part German, crumbled into “little states” that con- 

265 


The 

division of 
Verdun, 
843 A.D. 


Beginnings 
of France 
and Ger¬ 
many 


Degenerate 

Carolin- 

gians 













266 WESTERN EUROPE —NINTH CENTURY 


New bar¬ 
barian in¬ 
roads 


The 

Norsemen 



fused the map of Europe for centuries, most of them to be 
absorbed finally by more powerful neighbors. 

For a century after Verdun, political history remained a 
bloody tangle of treacherous family quarrels, while the descend¬ 
ants of the Hammer and the Great were known as the Bald, 
the Simple, the Fat, the Lazy. And now distracted Europe 
was imperiled by a new danger from without. Once more bar¬ 
barian invasions threatened the civilized world. On the east, 
hordes of wild Slavs and of wilder Hungarians broke across 
the frontiers, ravaged Germany, and penetrated sometimes even 
to Rome or to Toulouse in southern France; the Mohammedan 


Remains op a Viking Ship found buried in sand at Gokstad, Norway. 

It is of oak, unpainted, 79' 4" by 16; 6 feet deep in the middle. 

Moors from Africa attacked Italy and Sicily, establishing them¬ 
selves firmly in many districts; and fierce Norse pirates harried 
every coast. 

The Norsemen were a new branch of the Teutons, and the 
fiercest and wildest of that race. They dwelt in the Scandi¬ 
navian peninsulas, and were still heathen. They had taken 
no part in the earlier Teutonic invasions; but, in the ninth 
century, population was becoming too crowded for their bleak 
lands, and they were driven to seek new homes. Some of them 
colonized distant Iceland, but the greater number resorted to 
raiding richer countries. The Swedes conquered Finns and 












“BRITAIN” BECOMES “ENGLAND 


267 


Slavs on the east, while Danish and Norse “Vikings” (“sons 
of the fiords”) set forth upon “the pathway of the swans,” 
in fleets, sometimes of hundreds of boats, to harry western 
Europe. Driving their light craft far up the rivers, they then 
seized horses and ravaged at will, sacking cities like Hamburg, 

Rouen, Paris, Nantes, Tours, Cologne, and stabling their steeds 
in the cathedral of Aachen about the tomb of Charlemagne. 

At last, like the earlier Teutons, the Norsemen from plun¬ 
derers became conquerors. They settled the Orkneys and 
Shetlands and patches on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, 
and finally established themselves in the north of France — 
named, from them, Normandy — and in the east of England. 

II. BRITAIN BECOMES ENGLAND 

We must go back to note how Britain had become England. The 

In 408 the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain to Teutoni c 
0 # # conquest o 

defend Italy against the threatened invasion by the Goths Britain, 

(p. 245). This left the dismayed Romanized Britons to defend 449 - 6 °° 
themselves as best they could against the wild Celts 1 from the 
Scottish mountains and the Teutonic Angles and Saxons from 
the sea side. The Britons called in these Teutons to beat off 
the other foe, and (449) these dangerous protectors began to 
take the land for their own, — in many little kingdoms. 

This conquest, unlike that of Gaul and Spain, was very slow. The con- 
It took the Teutons a century and a half (till about 600) to ^ st slow 
master the eastern half of the island. Coming by sea, they thorough 
came necessarily in small bands. They were still 'pagans: 
so they spread ruthless destruction and provoked desperate 
resistance. Moreover Britain had been less completely Roman¬ 
ized than the continental provinces were : there was more forest 
and marsh, and fewer Roman roads; hence the natives found 
it easier to make repeated stands. And because the conquest was 
slow, it was thorough. Eastern England became strictly a 
Teutonic land. Roman institutions and language vanished, 
and the Romanized natives were slain or enslaved. 

1 Celt includes the Highland Scots, the Irish, the Gauls of France, and 
the native Britons of Britain before the Teutonic conquest. 



The Danes 
in England 


268 WESTERN EUROPE — NINTH CENTURY 

About 600 a.d. Christian missionaries from Rome (and some 
from Ireland) converted these heathen conquerors. And in 



St. Martin’s Church, Near Canterbury. — From a photograph. Parts 
of the building are very old and may have belonged to a church of the 
Roman period. At all events, on this site was the first Christian church 
used by Augustine and his fellow missionaries, sent out by Pope Gregory 
to convert the Teutonic states in Britain. Queen Bertha, a Frankish 
princess, who had married the heathen king of Kent, secured them 
this privilege. Her tomb is shown in the church. 


the middle of the ninth century Egbert, king of the West Saxons 
. (Wessex, in South England), made himself also king of the 
Angles (English) and finally brought all the Teutonic parts of 

the island under his authority 
as head king. Then came 
the Danish invasions. 

In 871, after a great battle 
in which the king of Wessex 
was slain, the Danes became 
for a time masters of Eng¬ 
land. The power of Wessex 

Plowing —from an Anglo-Saxon manu- was soon revived however 
script in the British Museum. by Alfred the Great ( 871 _ 

901). The Danes were defeated, baptized, and shut off in 
the “Danelaw” northeast of Watling Street (an old Roman 















' ENGLAND 

AND 

THE DANELAGH 
about 900 


SCALE OF MILES 


English 


Danish 


Wailing Street 


Chest< 




Brecknock; 


organ wg. 


W^rBristol 


l.L. POATES, N.y. 














































































































































































' 

* 





















































































FEUDALISM 


269 


road from London to Chester); and all the Teutonic states in 
South England now willingly accepted the rule of Wessex for 
protection against the Dane. Alfred gave the rest of his splendid 
life to heal the wounds of his kingdom, and, more successfully 
than Charlemagne, to revive learning in a barbarous age — 
though at' first there could be found “not one priest” in the 
kingdom who could understand the church services that he 
mumbled by rote — and Alfred’s sons and grandson, in a 
measure, reconquered Danish England. 


III. FEUDALISM 


“A 'protest of barbarism against barbarism.” — Taine. 


there, and in ever growing 
numbers, some petty chief 
— retired bandit, rude 
huntsman, or old officer of 
a king — planted himself 
firmly on a small domain, 
fortifying a stockaded 
house and gathering a 
troop of fighters under him 
to protect it. By so doing, 
he became the protector 
of others. The neighbor¬ 
hood turned gladly to any 
strong man as its defender 
and master. Weaker land¬ 
lords surrendered (“com¬ 
mended”) their lands to 
him, receiving them back 



After Charlemagne, the ninth century on the continent 
became a time of indescribable horror. The strong robbed 
the weak, and brigands 
worked their will in plun¬ 
der and torture. But out 
of this anarchy emerged a 
new social order. Here and 


Entrance to a Feudal Castle. — From 
Gautier’s La Chevalerie. The draw-bridge 
crossed the moat, or ditch, that surrounded 
a castle. When it was raised, the port¬ 
cullis (whose massive iron teeth can be 
seen in the doorway) was let fall. 


Alfred the 
Great 


The anarchy 
of the ninth 
century 
forces 
Europe into 
feudalism 








270 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


as “fiefs.” They became his vassals; he became their lord. 
The former “free peasants/’ on the lord’s own lands and on 
the lands of his vassals, saw that they were no longer at the 
mercy of any chance marauder. They ventured again to plow 
and sow, and perhaps they were permitted in part to reap. 
On their part, they cultivated also the lord’s crop, and paid 
him dues for house, for cattle, and for each sale or inheritance. 
The village became his village; the inhabitants, his villeins. 
Fugitive wretches, too, without the old resident’s claim to con¬ 
sideration, gathered on the lord’s lands to receive such measure 


Origin of 
the feudal 
privileges of 
the nobles 



Bodlam Castle in England — a well-preserved medieval structure. 

of mercy as he might grant, and usually sank into the class of 
serfs of whom there were already many on all estates. 

In return for the protection he gave, the lord assumed great 
privileges, unspeakably obnoxious in later centuries, but in their 
origin connected with some benefit. The noble slew the wild 
beast — and came to have the sole right to hunt. As organizer 
of labor, he forced the villeins to build the mill (his mill), the 
oven, the ferry, the bridge, the highway; then he took toll 
for the use of each — and later he demolished mills that the 
villeins wished to build for themselves. 






CASTLES AND MEN-AT-ARMS 


271 


Finally each district had its body of mailed horsemen and its 
circle of frowning castles. These two features typify the new 
order — which we call feudalism. 

“Castles” rose at every ford and above each mountain pass 
and on every hill commanding a fertile plain. At first they 
were mere wooden blockhouses, but soon they grew into those 
enormous structures of massive stone, crowned by frowning 
battlements and inclosing many acres, 
whose picturesque gray ruins still 
dot the landscape in Europe. 

Upon even the early castle, the 
Norse invader spent his force in vain; 
while each such fortress was ready 
to pour forth its band of trained 
men-at-arms (horsemen in mail) to 
cut off stragglers and hold the fords. 

The raider’s day was over — but 
meanwhile the old Teutonic militia, 
in which every freeman had his place, 
had given way to an ironclad cav¬ 
alry, the resistless weapon of a new 
feudal aristocracy, which could ride 
down foot-soldiers (infantry) at will — 
till the invention of gunpowder, cen¬ 
turies later, helped again to make 
fighting men equal. 



Knight in Plate Armor, 
visor up. — From Lacroix, 
Vie Militaire. Plate armor 
came in only about 1300, 
succeeding lighter chain 
mail. 


Each petty district was practically in¬ 
dependent of every other district. The 
king had been expected to protect 
every corner of his realm. Actually he had protected only some 
central district; but under feudalism each little chieftain proved 
able to protect his small corner, when he had seized the king’s 
powers there. His territory was a little state. The great nobles 
coined money and made war like very kings. Indeed a vassal 
owed allegiance to his overlords two or more grades above him 
only through the one overlord just above him. He must follow his 


The feudal 
castle 


And the 
ironclad 
cavalry 


Feudal 
“ decentral¬ 
ization ” 






272 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


Economic 
causes of 
feudalism 


Feudal 

land- 

holding 


Lords 

and vassals 


immediate lord to war against them and even against his king. 
This decentralization was the result not only of military needs 
but also of economic 1 needs — of the lack of money and the 
lack of roads. The rich man’s wealth was all in land; and 
he could make his land pay him only by renting it out for 
services or for produce. “Nobles” paid him for parts of it 
by fighting for him. Workers paid him for other parts by rais¬ 
ing and harvesting his crops and by giving him part of their 
own. A man without land was glad to pay so for the use of 
some in one way or the other. 

In theory, the holder of any piece of land was a tenant of some 
higher landlord. The king was the supreme landlord. He let 
out most of the land of the kingdom, on terms of military serv¬ 
ice, to great vassals. Each of these parceled out most of what 
he received, on like terms, to smaller vassals ; and so on, perhaps 
through six or seven steps, until the smallest division was reached 
that could support a mailed horseman. 

But in practice there was no such regularity. The various 
grades were interlocked in the most confusing way. Except for 
the smallest knights, all landlords of the fighting class were 
“ suzerains ” (liege lords); and, except perhaps the king, all 
were vassals. There was no great social distinction between 
lord and vassals. The “vassal” was always a “noble,” and his 
service was always “honorable,” — never to be confounded 
with the “ignoble” service paid by serfs and villeins. 

The relation between suzerain and vassal had the character 
of a bargain for mutual advantage. The vassal was to present 
himself at the call of his lord to serve in war, with followers 
according to the size of his fief, but only for short terms and 
usually not to go “out of the realm.” He must also serve in 
the lord’s “court” twice or thrice a year, to advise in matters 
of policy and to give judgment in disputes between vassals. 
He did not pay “taxes,” in our sense, but on frequent occasions 
he did have to make to the lord certain financial contributions — 
“reliefs” and “aids.” The lord, on his part, was bound to 
1 Economics refers to wealth, as politics does to government. 





PRIVATE WARS 


273 


defend his vassal, to treat him justly, and to see that he found 
just treatment from his co-vassals. 

Feudal theory, then, paid elaborate regard to rights; but 
feudal practice was mainly a matter of force. It was not easy to 
enforce the decisions of the crude courts against a noble offender 
who chose to resist, and in any case war was thought the most 
honorable way to settle disputes. Like the trial by combat, 
it was considered an appeal to the judgment of God. “Private 
wars,” between noble and noble, became a chief evil of the age. 
They hindered the growth of industry, and commonly they hurt 
neutral parties more than belligerents. There was little actual 
suffering by the warring nobles, and very little heroism. The 
weaker party usually shut itself up in its castle. The stronger 
side ravaged the villages in the neighborhood, driving off the 
cattle and perhaps torturing the peasants for their small hidden 
treasures, and outraging the women. 

Clergy and nobles , praying class and fighting class, were 
supported by a vastly larger number of “ignoble” workers, who 
were usually referred to only as other live stock might be men¬ 
tioned. Each noble had to keep some of his land for the support 
of his own household and for other revenue. This “domain” 
land was cultivated by the lord’s serfs and villeins, under 
direction of a bailiff, or steward. The peasant workers did 
not live in scattered farmhouses, each on its own field; they 
were grouped in little villages of twenty or fifty dwellings, as 
in Europe to-day. Such a village, with its adjoining “fields,” 
was a “manor” 

Each manor had its church, at a little distance, and usually 
its manor house — the lord’s castle on a hill above the other 
dwellings, or maybe a house only a trifle better than the homes 
of the villeins, used by the lord’s steward. At one end of the 
street stood the lord’s smithy; and near by, on some convenient 
stream, was the lord’s mill. 

As in the last Roman days (p. 235), the serf was bound to 
the soil by law: he could not leave it, but neither could he be 
sold apart from it. He had his own bit of ground to cultivate, 


Private 

war 


The 

feudal 

manor 


Serfs 

and 

villeins 




274 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


Homes of 
the peasants 


at such times as the lord’s bailiff did not call him to labor on the 
lord’s land. Usually the bailiff summoned the serfs in turn, 
each for two or for three days each week; but in harvest or 
haying he might keep them all busy, to the ruin of their own 
little crops. If the serf did get a crop, he had to pay a large 
part of it for the use of his land. He paid also a multitude of 
other dues and fines — sometimes in money, but usually “ in 
kind,” — eggs, a goose, a cock, a calf, a portion of grain. 

The villein was a step higher. He was “free” in person. 
That is, he could leave his land and change lords at will; but 



A Reaper’s Cart Going up Hill. — After a fourteenth century manu¬ 
script. The force of men and horses, and the character of the wheels, 
indicates the nature of the roads. (The steepness of the hill is exag¬ 
gerated, to fit the picture to the space in the manuscript.) 

he had to have some lord. The landless and masterless man was 
an outlaw, at the mercy of any lord. In profits from labor and in 
manner of life there was little to choose between serf and villein. 
The homes, serf’s or villein’s, were low, filthy, earth-floored, 
straw-thatched, one-room hovels of wood and sticks plastered 
together with mud, without window or chimney (except a hole 
in the roof). These homes straggled along either side of an 
irregular lane, where poultry, pigs, and children played together 
in the dirt. Behind each house was its weedy garden patch, 
and its low stable. 






HOW THE COMMON PEOPLE LIVED 


275 


Small as the house was it was not cluttered with furniture. 
A handmill for grinding meal, or at least a stone mortar in 
which to crush grain, a pot and kettle, possibly a feather bed, 
one or two rude benches, and a few tools for the peasant’s 
work, made up the contents of even the well-to-do homes. 

Farming was very crude. The plowland was divided into 
three great “fields” These were unfenced, and lay about the 
village at any convenient spots. One field was sown to wheat 
(in the fall); one to rye or barley (in the spring); and the third 
lay fallow, to recuperate. The next year this third field would 
be the wheat land, while the old wheat field would raise the 
barley, and so on. This primitive “rotation of crops” kept a 
third of the land idle. 

Every “field” was divided into a great number of narrow 
strips, each as nearly as possible a “furrow-long ” and one, two, 
or four rods wide, so 
that each contained 
from a quarter of an 
acre to an acre. Usu¬ 
ally the strips were 
separated by “balks,” 
or ridges of turf. A 
peasant’s holding was 
about thirty acres, ten 
acres in each “ field ” ; 
and his share in each 
lay not in one piece, 
but in fifteen or thirty 
scattered strips. (See 
cut, p. 252.) 

This kind of holding compelled a “common” cultivation. 
That is, each man must sow what his neighbor sowed; and as 
a rule, each could sow, till, and harvest only when his neighbors 
did. Three-fold the seed, or six bushels of wheat to the acre, 
was a good crop in the thirteenth century. There were of course 
extensive pasture and wood lands for the cattle and swine. 

Farm animals were small. The wooden plow required eight 



Falconry. — From a medieval manuscript re¬ 
produced by Lacroix. A falconer, to capture 
and train young hawks to bring game to the 
master, was among the most trusted under- 
officials of each castle. 


Cultivation 
of the land 
in common 










276 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


Small 
variety 
in food 


Life in 
the manor 


Life in 
the castle 


oxen, and then it did hardly more than scratch the surface of 
the ground. Carts were few and cumbrous. There was little 
or no cultivation of root foods. Potatoes, of course, were un¬ 
known. Sometimes a few turnips and cabbages and carrots, 
rather uneatable varieties probably, were grown in garden 
plots behind the houses. Well-to-do peasants had a hive of 
bees in the garden plot. Honey was the chief luxury of the 
poor: sugar was still unknown in Europe. It was difficult 
to carry enough animals through the winter for the necessary 
farm work and breeding; so those to be used for food were 
killed in the fall and salted down. The large use of salt meat 
and the little variety in food caused loathsome diseases. 

Each village was a world hy itself. Even the different villages 
of the same lord had little intercourse with one another. The 
lord’s bailiff secured from some dis¬ 
tant market the three outside products 
needed, — salt, millstones, and iron for 
the plowshares and for other tools. 
Except for this, a village was hardly 
touched by the outside world — unless 
a war desolated it, or a royal proces¬ 
sion chanced to pass through it. 

The noble classes lived a life hardly 
more attractive to us. They dwelt in 
gloomy fortresses over dark dungeons 
where prisoners rotted. They had 
fighting for business, and hunting with 
hound and hawk, and playing at fight¬ 
ing (in tournament and joust), for 
pleasures. The ladies busied them¬ 
selves over tapestries and embroideries, 
in the chambers. Gay pages flitted 
through the halls, or played at chess in 
the deep windows. And in the courtyard lounged gruff men- 
at-arms, ready with blind obedience to follow the lord of the 
castle on any foray or even in an attack upon their king. 

The noble hunted for food, quite as much as for sport, and 



A Court Fool. — After a 
medieval miniature in 
brilliant colors. Many 
great lords kept such 
jesters. 





CHIVALRY 


277 


he did not suffer from lack of fresh meat. The game in forest Hunting 
and stream was his : for a common man to kill deer or hare or 
wild duck or trout, was to lose hand or eyes or life. Feasting Feasting 
filled a large part of the noble’s life. Meals were served in the ^ n s * ory 
great hall of the castle, and were 
the social hours of the day. 

Tables were set out on movable 
trestles, and the household, visitors, 
and dependents gathered about 
them on seats and benches, with 
nice respect for rank, — the master 
and his noblest guests at the head, 
on a raised platform, or “dais,” 
and the lowest servants toward 
the bottom of the long line. A 
profusion of food in many courses, 
especially at the midday “dinner,” 
was carried in from the kitchen 

across the open courtyard. Peacocks, swans, whole boars were 
favorite roasts, and huge venison “pies” were a common dish. 

At each guest’s place was a knife, to cut slices from the roasts 
within his reach, and a spoon for broths, but no fork or napkin 
or plate. Each one dipped his hand into the pasties, carry¬ 
ing the dripping food directly to his mouth. Loaves of bread 
were crumbled up and rolled between the hands to wipe off the 
surplus gravy, and then thrown to the dogs under the tables. 

The food was washed down with huge draughts of wine, usually 
diluted with water. Intervals between courses were filled with 
story telling and song, or by rude jokes from the lord’s “fool,” 
or perhaps traveling jugglers were brought in to perform. 

This grim life had its romantic side, indicated to us by the 
name chivalry (from the French cheval, horse) which has come 
to stand for the whole institution of knighthood. From the age 
of seven to that of fifteen, a noble boy usually served as a page 
in some castle (commonly not his own father’s), where he was 
trained daily in the use of light arms (cut on p. 278) and 





Jugglers in Sword-dance. - 
From a medieval manuscript. 






278 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


where he waited upon the ladies, — who in return taught him 
courtesy. 

Then for five or six years as a squire, the youth attended 
upon the lord of the castle, overseeing, too, in the field and in 
the hunt, the care of the lord’s horse and armor. Then he was 
ready to become a knight — after a solemn religious ceremony — 
by receiving the accolade (a light blow upon his shoulder as he 



The Exercise of the Quintain. — This shows an important part of the 
schooling of noble children. The boys ride, by turns, at. the wooden 
figure. If the rider strikes the shield squarely in the center, it is well. If 
he hits only a glancing blow, the wooden figure swings on its foot and 
whacks him with its club as he passes. 


knelt) from some older knight. More honored, but rarer, was 
the noble who was dubbed knight by some famous leader on 
the field of victory for distinguished bravery. 

Chivalry has been called “the flower of feudalism.” True, 
its virtues (bravery and devotion to ladies — of noble birth ) were 
carried to fantastic extremes; and true, too, its spirit was 
wholly a class spirit, recognizing no obligation outside the noble 
class. Still chivalry did soften manners and help somewhat in 
that brutal age to elevate woman, and it had much to do with 











THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 


279 


creating our idea of a gentleman. Toward the year 1400, the 
English poet Chaucer gives this picture of his ideal knight: 

“ A knight there was, and that a worthy man, 

That fro the time that he first began 
To riden out, he loved chivalry, 

Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy. . . 

And tho that he was worthy, he was wise, 

And of his port as meek as is a maid. 

And never yet no villainy he said. 

In all his life, unto no manner wight. 

He was a very perfect, gentle knight.” 

For Further Reading. —Excellent “source” material may be 
found in Robinson’s Readings or in Ogg’s Source Book , and in Lanier’s 
The Boy's Froissart. 

Historical fiction upon the feudal period is particularly valuable. 
Scott’s novels, of course, must not be overlooked, although they give a 
false glamour to the age. They should be corrected by “ Mark 
Twain’s” Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court. Other excel¬ 
lent portraits are given in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Black Arrow and 
Conan Doyle’s White Company. Charlotte Yonge’s Little Duke and 
Stockton’s Story of Viteau are good for young students and will be 
enjoyed by older ones. 

IV. THE CHURCH IN THE FEUDAL AGE 

The church in the feudal age was not only a religious organiza¬ 
tion : it was also a government. Its officers exercised many 
powers that have now been handed over to civil 1 officers. Pub¬ 
lic order depended upon it almost as completely as did private 
morals. With its spiritual thunders and the threat of its 
curse, it often protected the widow and orphan, and others 
in danger of oppression, from brutal barons who had respect 
for no earthly power. 

All Christendom was made up of parishes, — the smallest 
church units (p. 255). A group of parishes made up the diocese 
of a bishop. Nearly every town of any consequence in the 
twelfth century was a bishop’s seat. The bishop was the main¬ 
spring in church government. He was revered as the suc¬ 
cessor of the apostles, and was subject only to the guidance of 


The church 
also a 

government 


The bishop 


1 Civil is used very commonly in contrast to ecclesiastical. 


280 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


Bishops’ 

courts 


Benefit 
of clergy 


The arch¬ 
bishop 


the pope (successor to the chief of the apostles). Originally, 
the bishop’s special duty had been to oversee the parish priests; 
but, with the growth of the church, he had come to have other 
functions. He was a great feudal landlord, owing military 
service to one or more suzerains, and holding power over many 
temporal vassals; he had charge of extensive church property 
in his diocese, and of the collection of church revenues; and 
he looked after the enforcement of the laws of the church. 
This “canon law” had grown into a complex system. To ad¬ 
minister justice under it, each bishop held a court, made up of 
trained churchmen. This court had jurisdiction not merely 
over matters pertaining to the church: it tried any case that 
involved a clergyman or any one else under the special protec¬ 
tion of the church. To help in these duties, the bishop had a 
body of assistant clergy called canons. On the death of the 
bishop, this body (the “cathedral chapter”) chose his successor, 
— subject perhaps to the approval of some king or other tem¬ 
poral ruler. 

This right of the clergy to be tried in clerical courts was 
known as “benefit of clergy.” The practice had its good side. 
Ordinary courts and ordinary law partook of the violent and 
ferocious life of the age. Trials were rude; and ghastly punish¬ 
ments were inflicted for trivial offenses, — often, no doubt, 
upon the innocent. It was a gain when the peaceful and moral 
part of society secured the right to trial in more intelligent courts 
and by more civilized codes. 

But the church law was too mild to deal with serious crimes. 
Its advantages tempted men to “take Holy Orders,” until, 
besides the preaching clergy and the monks, the land swarmed 
with “ clerics” who were really only lawyers, secretaries, scholars, 
teachers, or mere adventurers. Some of these, by their crimes, 
brought disgrace upon the church and danger to the state. 

A number of dioceses made up a province. Over each prov¬ 
ince, seated in its most important city, was an archbishop, 
with general supervision over the other bishops of the province. 
His court, too, heard appeals from theirs. 



THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 


281 


At the head of all this hierarchy stood the pope, the spiritual The pope 
monarch of Christendom. He was supreme lawgiver, supreme 
judge, supreme executive. He issued new laws in the form of 
bulls (so-called from the gold seal, or bulla, on the documents), 
and he set aside old laws by his dispensations, — as when it 
seemed best to him to permit cousins to marry (a thing forbid¬ 
den by the canon law). His court heard appeals from the 
courts of bishop and archbishop, and likewise from many of 
the temporal courts of Christendom. Now and then he set 
aside appointments of bishops and other clergy, and himself 
filled the vacancies. At times he also sent legates into different 
countries, to represent his authority directly. A legate could 
revoke the judgment of a bishop’s court, remove bishops, and 
haughtily command obedience from kings, quite as Shakspere 
pictures in his King John. For aid in his high office the pope College of 
gathered about him a “ college”(collection) of cardinals. At cardinals 
first this body comprised only seven bishops of Rome and its 
vicinity; but it grew to include great churchmen in all coun¬ 
tries. 

To compel obedience, bishops and pope had two mighty Excommu- 
weapons — excommunication and interdict. An excommuni- mcataon 
cated man was shut out from all religious communion. He 
could attend no church service, receive no sacrament, and at 
death, if still unforgiven, his body could not receive Christian 
burial. Excommunication was also a boycott for all social 
and business relations. If obeyed by the community, it cut a 
man off absolutely from all communication with his fellows, and 
made him an outlaw. No one might speak to him or give him 
food or shelter, under danger of similar penalty, and his very 
presence was shunned like the pestilence. What excommuni- Interdict 
cation was to the individual, the interdict was to a district or 
a nation. Churches were closed, and no religious ceremonies 
were permitted, except the rites of baptism and of extreme 
unction. No marriage could be performed, and there could be 
no burial in consecrated ground. “ The dead were left unburied, 
and the living were unblessed.” 




282 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


The de¬ 
mocracy of 
the church 


The village 
priest 



Thus the church was a vast centralized monarchy, with its 
regular officers, its laws and legislatures and judges, its taxes, 
its terrible punishments — and its promise of eternal reward. 
And yet this government was more democratic in spirit than 
feudal society was. Men of humblest birth often rose to its 
loftiest offices. Gregory VII, who set his foot upon the neck 
of the mightiest king in Europe, was the son of a poor peasant. 

The church was the only 
part of society in the Mid¬ 
dle Ages where study and 
intellectual ability could 
lift a poor boy to power— 
and so it was recruited 
from the best minds. 

Of all this mighty or¬ 
ganization, the village 
priest brought the church 
closest home to the mass of 
the people. The great ec¬ 
clesiastics— bishops, arch¬ 
bishops, and abbots—were 
often from the noble class 
by birth, and in any case 
they always became part 
of the aristocracy. But 
the rural priest was com¬ 
monly a peasant in origin, 
and he often remained es¬ 
sentially a peasant in his life,—marrying in the village (until the 
eleventh century), and working in the fields with his neighbors. 
He was a peasant with a somewhat better income than his fellows, 
with a little learning, a revered position, and with great power 
for good. He christened, absolved, married, and buried his 
parishioners, looked after their bodily welfare so far as he knew 
how, comforted the heart-sore and wretched, and taught all, 
by word and example, to hold fast to right living. The church 
building was also the social center of the parish. Near it, on 


Norman Doorway (the West Portal) of 
Iffley Church, a small but beautiful 
twelfth-century church in a little English 
village near Oxford. Norman architec¬ 
ture used the round arch and much plain 
but effective ornament. It was soon to 
give way to the Gothic. See p. 304. 







THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 


283 


Sunday, between the sacred services, the people found their 
chief recreation in sports and games. And from its steps the 
priest gave to them what news they received from the outside 
world, reading aloud there, too, any rare letter that some adven¬ 
turous wanderer might be able to get written for him by some 
stranger-priest. 

In the twelfth century, when, as we shall see, towns began to 
grow up, these did not fit into the old organization of the church. 
Neither parish priests nor monks took care of the religious needs 
of the crowded populations. The poorer inhabitants were 
miserable in body, too, beyond all words, — fever and plague 
stricken, perishing of want and filth. Early in the thirteenth 
century, these conditions called‘forth a religious revival, with 
the rise of two new religious orders — the Franciscan and the 
Dominica^, brotherhodds. These “begging friars” went forth, 
two and two, to the poor and the outcasts, to act as healers and 
preachers. They were missionary monks. 

i' : 

V. ENGLAND IN THE FEUDAL AGE 

Long before the year 1000 the Saxons in England had learned 
to work many forms of local self-government — to manage many 
of their own affairs at their own doors, not only in village 
(manor) “courts,” but also in courts (assemblies) of the larger 
units, the hundreds and shires (counties). Moreover, they had 
become familiar with the practice of sending a sort of representa¬ 
tive from the village to these larger assemblies — since all men 
could not attend these in person. 

True, after the year 900 an irregular Saxon feudalism had been 
growing up; and these local “courts” had fallen largely under 
the control of neighboring landlords. Still enough activity 
among the people themselves survived so that these assemblies, 
with their representative principle, were to prove the cradle of 
later English and American liberty. 

In 1066 came the Norman Conquest. A century and a half 
before, Norse pirates had settled in a province of northern 
France. In that district of Normandy (p. 267), they had 


The friars 
and 

town life 


Local self- 
government 
and the idea 
of represen¬ 
tation in 
Saxon 
England 


Saxon 

feudalism 


The Norman 

Conquest, 

1066 



284 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


A more 
efficient 
central 
government 


quickly become leaders in Frankish “civilization,” and now 
they transplanted it among the ruder Saxons of England, along 
with much new blood and new elements in language and im¬ 
portant contributions in government. 

Since the time of Alfred, the chief dangers to England had 
been (1) a possible splitting apart of Danish north and Saxon 
south, and (2) the growth of feudal anarchy. The Norman 
crushed the old north and south into one, and built up a een- 


Battle of Hastings. — From the Bayeux Tapestry. The Bayeux Tapes¬ 
try is a linen band 230 feet long and 20 inches wide, embroidered in 
colored worsteds, with 72 scenes illustrating the Norman Conquest. 
It was a contemporary work. The scene given here pertains to the close 
of the battle. Harold, the Saxon king, supported by his chosen “hus- 
carles,” is making the final stand, beneath the Dragon standard, against 
the Norman horse led by Duke William, afterward known as the Con¬ 
queror. 



A thousand- 
year 
struggle 
for liberty 


tral government strong enough to control the feudal nobles 
and to prevent them from dividing the kingly power among 
themselves. Local institutions, in the main, remained Saxon, 
but the central government gained a new efficiency from the 
Norman genius for organization. 

At the same time, the Norman kings were not supreme 
enough to become absolute despots. This was chiefly because, 
through dread of the new royal power, conquering Norman 
noble and conquered Saxon people drew together quickly into 
an English nation — the first true nation of Europe. Then, in 
















ENGLAND : THE NORMAN CONQUEST 


285 


centuries of slow, determined progress, this new nation won 
constitutional liberty. 

“Lance and torch and tumult, steel and gray-goose wing, 
Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the king.” 

And not merely by fighting in the field was this liberty won, 
but, even more, by countless almost unrecorded martyrdoms 
of heroic and often nameless men, on the scaffold, in the dun¬ 
geon, or, harder still, in broken lives and ruined homes. Thus 
did Englishmen, at a great price, work out, first of all peoples 
for a large territory, the union of a strong central government 
and of free institutions. 

The Conquest drew isolated England back into the thick 
of continental politics. Henry II (1154-1189) was the most 
powerful monarch of Europe, ruling not only England but more 
than half France as well — as a nominal vassal of the French 
king. Still all the really important results of his long and busy 
reign came in England. Preeminent stands out the organiza¬ 
tion of the English courts of justice, with circuit judges to spread 
a “common” law throughout the entire realm — in place of 
the varying local customs found in feudal courts in the con¬ 
tinental countries. At this same time came the development 
of our grand jury and also of our trial jury. Henry’s reforms, 
as completed a century later by the great Edward, gave us the 
English judicial system of the present day in almost every 
particular. 

The first Norman king had carried out a great census (recorded in 
Domesday Book ) of the people and the resources of the realm. In com¬ 
piling this census, he relied mainly (in the Norman ignorance of the 
land) upon a body of sworn men ( jurors ) in each neighborhood. This 
was an old Norman custom; but, while it disappeared in Normandy, 
it had a wonderful development in England. Succeeding kings used 
it in hundreds of cases of which we have record for like though less 
important cases, and probably it was the biggest one element in the 
appearance of representative government (p. 288). 

Between the great Henry and the even greater Edward came 
three weak, would-be tyrants — Richard, John, and the third 


Reforms of 
Henry II 
in the 
law courts 


Circuit 
judges and 
the Common 
Law 


286 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


Magna 
Carta, 1215 


And 

American 

liberty 


Henry. The misrule of John resulted in Magna Carta; that 
of Henry, in the first true Parliament. 

1. In 1215, in a grassy meadow of the Thames called Runny- 
mede, the tyrant John, backed only by a few mercenaries and 
confronted by a people in arms, found himself forced to sign 
the Great Charter, “the first great document in the Bible of 
English Liberties.” 

In the main, the charter merely restated ancient liberties; 
but the closing provision expressly sanctioned rebellion against 


imp ntcmcr ttcku 


Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut dissaisiatur, aut utlagetur, 
No free man shall be taken, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed , 


ftttr ^ J\rtt Wh 11 fug eum tltnutg tt fttg 


aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus nec super 
or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor upon 


emu mitten? tttfi gfe&ak ittWiTginiii Sr 

eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terrae. 
him send, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. 


Lttili ant^t(£em 


tecttmi <htr tttftuiX* 


Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut differemus, rectum aut justiciam. 
To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny, or delay, right or justice. 


Sections 39 and 40 of Magna Carta. — The bars are facsimiles of the 
writing in the charter, with the curious abbreviations of the medieval 
Latin. Below each line is given the Latin in full with a translation. 


a king who should refuse to obey it. That is, it set the law of 
the land above the king’s will. True, in some other countries 
during the Middle Ages, the great vassals extorted charters of 
liberties for themselves from their kings. But in this charter, 
the barons promised to their dependents the same rights they de¬ 
manded for themselves from the king , and special provisions looked 
after the welfare of townsmen and even of villeins. In the next 
two centuries, English kings were obliged to “confirm” it thirty- 
eight times; and its principles, and some of its wording, have 








ENGLAND : MAGNA CARTA 


287 


passed into the constitution and laws of every American 
state. 

The charter defined the “aids” to which suzerains were 
entitled, — and so put an end to extortion. It declared that 
the king could raise no scutage 1 or other unusual “aid” from 
his vassals without the consent of the Great Council, — and 
since all vassals of the king could attend this Council, this 
provision established the principle, No taxation without the con¬ 
sent of the taxed. It declared an accused man entitled to speedy 
trial, — and so laid the foundation for later laws of habeas 
corpus. It affirmed that no villein, by any fine, should lose 
his oxen or plow, and so foreshadowed our modern laws pro¬ 
viding that legal suits shall not take from a man his home or his 
tools. Two notable provisions are shown on p. 286. 

2. Henry II and Edward I were the two great “lawgivers” 
among the English kings. But Henry carried his many re¬ 
forms, not by royal decrees, but by a series of “assizes” (codes) 
drawn up by the Great Council; and Edward carried his in 
an even longer series of “statutes” enacted by a new national 
legislature which we call Parliament. 

Some sort of “Assembly” has always made part of the Eng¬ 
lish government. Under the Saxon kings, the Witan (or meeting 
of Wisemen) sanctioned codes of laws and even deposed and 
elected kings. It consisted of large land-owners and officials 
and the higher clergy, with now and then some mingling of more 
democratic elements, and it was far more powerful than the 
Frankish Mayfield (p. 261). 

After the Conquest, the Witan gave way to the Great Council 
of the Norman kings. This was a feudal gathering — made 
up of lords and bishops, resembling the Witan, but more aris¬ 
tocratic, and less powerful. A king was supposed to rule “with 
the advice and consent” of his Council; but in practice that 
body was merely the king’s mouthpiece until Henry II raised 
it to real importance. 

All who held land directly of the king (“tenants-in-chief,” 

1 A sort of war tax recently introduced in the place of military service. 


The 

beginnings 
of Parlia¬ 
ment 



288 


THE FEUDAL AGE 



or “barons”) were entitled to attend the Council, but only the 
“great barons” ever came. Magna Carta directed that there¬ 
after the great barons were to be summoned individually by 
letter, and the numerous smaller barons by a general notice 
read by the sheriffs in the court of each county. Still the 
smaller barons failed to assemble; and in the troubles of the 
reign of Henry III, on two or three occasions, the sheriffs had 
been directed to see to it that each county sent knights to the 


Cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral — a shaded walk surrounding the 
inner court (“close ”) except where the walls of the Cathedral itself form 
the inclosure. Cf. Plate L, facing p. 313. 

gathering. Thus a representative element was introduced into 
the national assembly. 

This was a natural step for Englishmen. The principle of 
representative government was no way new to them. It had 
taken root long before in local institutions. The “four men” 
of each township present in court of hundred or shire spoke 
for all their township. The sworn “jurors” of a shire who gave 
testimony in compiling Domesday Book under William I or 
“presented” offenders for trial under Henry II or did the many 
other things the Norman kings called on them to do (p. 285), 













ENGLAND : RISE OF PARLIAMENT 


289 


spoke for the whole shire. England was familiar with the prac¬ 
tice of selecting certain men from a community to speak for the 
community as a whole. The same principle was now applied 
in a larger, central gathering, for all England. 

Then in 1265 the glorious rebel, Simon of Montfort, gave 
us a real “ Parliament.” He had been leading the people against 
the weak, ill-ruling Henry III, and had made him prisoner, and 
now he called a national assembly to settle the government. 



English Family Dinner. — From a fourteenth-century manuscript. 
Note the dogs, the musicians, and the barefooted monk, at whom the 
jester is directing some witticism. Observe, too, that the Norman 
round arch (p. 282, based upon the Roman) has been superseded by the 
pointed arch of the Gothic style (p. 304). 


This time not only was each shire invited to send two knights,, 
but each borough (town) to send two burgesses, to sit with the 
usual lords. Simon wanted the moral support of the nation , 
and so he replaced the u Great Council of royal vassals” hy a 
“ Parliament” representing the whole people. In 1295 after some 
variations, Edward I adopted this model of Simon’s; and for 
the first time in history representative government was firmly 
established for a nation. 


The 

Parliaments 
of 1265 
and 1295 








290 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


The two 
“ Houses ” 


France in 
the feudal 
age 


Growth of 
the king’s 
territory 


Half a century later, Parliament divided into two Houses. 
At first all sat together. Had this continued, the townsmen 
would never have secured much voice: they would have been 
frightened and overawed by the nobles. The result would have 
been about as bad if the three estates had come to sit separately, 
as they did in France and Spain. With so many distinct orders, 
an able king could easily have played off one against the other. 
But England followed a different course: the great peers, 
lay and spiritual, who were summoned by individual letters, 
made a “ House of Lords,” while the representative elements — 
knights of the shire and burgesses, who had been accustomed 
to act together in shire courts — came together, in the national 
assembly, as the “ House of Commons.” 

For Further Reading. — Green’s English People is the best one book on 
this period. 

VI. OTHER LANDS IN THE FEUDAL AGE 

In 987 in France the degenerate Carolingian 1 line gave way 
to Hugh Capet, founder of the long line of Capetian kings. 
Hugh Capet found France broken into feudal fragments. 
These, in the next three centuries, he and his descendants 
welded into a new French nation. It was not the people here 
who fused themselves into a nation in a long struggle against 
royal despotism, as in England: it was the kings who made the 
French nation , in a long struggle against feudal anarchy within 
and foreign conquest from without. 

Philip Augustus (1180-1223) at the opening of his reign 
ruled directly only one twelfth of modern France — only one 
sixth as much of it as was then ruled by Henry II of England — | 
and held not one seaport. At the close of his reign Philip ruled 
directly two thirds of France. The consolidation of the realm 
was mainly completed by his grandson, Louis IX (St. Louis), 
and by Louis’ grandson, Philip the Fair (1285-1314). 

And as the kings won the soil of France piece by piece, so 
too they added gradually to the royal power, until this Philip 

1 The name Carolingian, from Carolus, the Latin form of Charles, is 
applied to all the rulers of Charlemagne’s line. 






— 55 



50 


45 



<55 


50 - 


45 




- 45 


0 


ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 
1154 - 1453 . 


SCALE OF MILES 


Limit of the French Kingdom - 

Possessions of Plantagenet Kings_. 

Lands of the French Kings _ 

Independent Fiefs in France _ 


f. I-1— 

0 50 100 


200 


200 


400 


500 


000 


Territory of Charles the Bold of Burgundy 



k.l. POATES, ENSR., N.Y. 




































































FRANCE : CONSOLIDATION AND DESPOTISM 291 


the Fair and his successors were the most autocratic sovereigns in 
Europe in their day. France was divided into districts ruled 
by royal officers. Each such appointed officer, as representative 
of the king, held vast power, appointing all inferior officers in 
his district, collecting the royal revenues, and controlling the 
administration in every detail. These royal officers were chosen 
from men of humble birth — that they might not aspire too much. 

The feudal lords had lost all authority except over their serfs 
and villeins: the small vassals and the townsmen were pro¬ 
tected now from their rapacity and capricious tyranny. In 
England this escape had come, a little earlier, through the courts, 
the itinerant justices, and the free principles of the common law; 
and Englishmen grew to have an instinctive reverence for 
courts and law as the protectors of liberty. In France the 
like security came through the despotic power intrusted to their 
officers by the absolute French kings; and for centuries French¬ 
men came to trust autocracy as Englishmen trusted law. 

This contrast is shown, in part, in the history of the French 
institution which most resembled the English Parliament. 
Philip the Fair completed his reforms by adding respresentatives 
of the towns to the nobles and clergy in the Great Council of 
France. This brought together all three “estates”; and the 
gathering was called the Estates General, to distinguish it from 
smaller gatherings in the separate provinces. The first meet¬ 
ing in this form was held in 1302, only a few years after the 
“ Model Parliament ” in England. But Philip and his successors 
used the Estates General only as a convenient taxing machine. 
It never became a governing body, as the English Parliament did. 
It lacked root in local custom ; nor did the French people know 
how to value it. The kings assembled the Estates General 
only when they chose, and easily controlled it. When they 
no longer needed it, the meetings grew rarer, and finally ceased, 
without protest by the people. 

In Germany the Carolingian line died out even sooner than 
in France, and then the princes chose a Saxon duke for King 
of the Germans. The second of these Saxon kings was Otto I 


Growth of 
royal power 


The 

Estates 

General 


Germany 
in the 
feudal age 


292 


THE FEUDAL AGE 


Expansion 
to the east 


False ambi¬ 
tion of the 
German 
kings 


Otto and 
the Holy 
Roman 
Empire, 962 


Popes and 
Emperors 


(936-973). His first great work was to end forever the barbarian 
inroads. The nomad Hungarians (p. 266) once more broke 
across the eastern border in enormous numbers. Otto crushed 
them with horrible slaughter at the battle of Lechfeld. Soon 
after, the Hungarians adopted Christianity and settled down in 
modern Hungary. 

Otto followed up his success. Year by year, he forced farther 
back the Slavs from his eastern borders, and established “marks” 
(a name for a border state) along that whole frontier. On the 
extreme southeast was the Eastmark (against the Hungarians), 
to grow into modern Aystria, while the Mark of Brandenburg 
on the northeast (against the Slavs) was to grow into modern 
Prussia. Now, too, began a new colonizing movement which 
soon extended Germany from the Elbe to the Oder and carried 
swarms of German settlers among even the savage Prussians 
and the Slavs of the heathen Baltic coast. 

It should have been the work of the German kings to foster 
this defensive colonization along their barbarous eastern borders, 
and to fuse the Germans themselves into a true nation. But 
Otto and his successors were drawn from this work, so well 
begun, by greedy dreams of wider empire. 

For half a century the Empire in the West had lapsed. Otto 
was tempted to restore it — as a mask for seizing upon Italy. 
That unhappy land had no shadow of union. Saracens from 
Africa contested the south with the Greek Empire and the 
Lombards, and the north was devastated by ferocious wars be¬ 
tween petty states. Otto invaded Italy, and in 962 had himself 
consecrated by the pope at Rome as “ Emperor of the Romans.” 

The restored Empire did not include all “Western Europe,” 
as Charlemagne’s Empire did in its day. France was outside, 
as were new Christian kingdoms in England, Scandinavia, 
Poland, and Hungary. As a physical power it rested wholly 
on German military prowess. And it was “the Holy Roman 
Empire of the German People.” It claimed to share the 
headship of Christendom with the papacy. But the relation 
between Emperors and Popes was not defined; there followed 
three centuries of fatal struggle. 


| 
















































e 


% 




















GERMANY: THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 293 

During these three centuries the history of Germany was hound 
up with that of Italy. This connection brought to Germany 
somewhat of the culture and art of the ancient world; but in 
government and industry it spelled ruin. Otto was merely the 
first of a long line of German kings who led splendid German 
armies across the Alps, to melt away in fever beneath the Italian 
sun. German strength was frittered away in foreign squabbles, 
and the chance to make a German nation was lost for nine hun¬ 
dred years. 

No better were the results to Italy. A German king, however 
much a “Roman” Emperor, could enter Italy only with a Ger¬ 
man army at his back. The southern land was a conquered 
province, ruled by uncouth northern barbarians. True, at 
last the Popes won, and expelled the Germans; but only by 
calling in Frenchman and Spaniard, and making Italy for 
centuries more the battle ground and battle prize of Europe. 

In 1254 the last German ruler was driven from Italy. The 
Empire ceased to he either “ Holy” or “Roman.” Thereafter it 
was wholly German. And even the German kingdom seemed 
extinct. For twenty years (1254-1273) there was no Emperor, 
and no king, in Germany. This was the period of “Fist- 
law.” Germany dissolved into more than 300 petty states — 
“free cities,” duchies, marks, counties. (Cf. maps after pp. 
296, 314.) 


Ruin to both 
Germany 
and Italy 


The period 
of “ Fist- 
law ” in 
Germany, 
1254-1273 


CHAPTER XXXI 


Moham¬ 
medan cul¬ 
ture during 
Europe’s 
“ Dark 
Ages ” 


THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300 

I. THE CRUSADES 

Prom 1100 to 1300 a.d., all Western Europe was deeply moved 
by one common impulse. The Mohammedans (pp. 253-255) 
still ruled from the Pyrenees to the Ganges. They had utilized 
the old culture of Persia and of Greece. Their governments 
were as good as the Oriental world had ever known. Their 
roads and canals encouraged commerce and. bound together 
distant regions. Their magnificent cities were built with a 
peculiar and beautiful architecture, characterized by the horse¬ 
shoe arch, the dome, the turret, the graceful minaret, and a rich 
ornament of “ arabesque.” Their manufactures were the finest 
in the world, both for beautiful design and for delicate work¬ 
manship. We still speak of “Toledo” blades, and “Morocco” 
leather, while “muslins” and “damasks” recall their superior 
processes at Mosul and Damascus. Europe was soon to owe 
to them these products, with many other things long-forgotten 
or new, — spices, oranges, lemons, rice, sugar cane, dates, 
asparagus, sesame, buckwheat, apricots, watermelons, oils, 
perfumes, calicoes, satins, the crossbow, the windmill. 

In intellectual lines Arab superiority was no less marked. 
While Europe had only a few monastic schools to light its 
“Dark Ages,” the Arabs had great universities, where philos¬ 
ophy, theology, law, rhetoric, were subjects of special study. 
The old Chaldean astrology was becoming true astronomy 
in the hands of the Arabians of Spain, and the heavens still 
keep a thick sprinkling of Arabic names, like Aldebaran, while 
common terms in our texts oh astronomy ( azimuth , zenith, 
nadir ) bear like testimony. From India the Arabs brought 
the “Arabic” notation, while Europe was still struggling with 

294 






CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES 


295 



A B yzant (Bezant). — A gold coin issued 
by the emperors at Constantinople in 
the Middle Ages. This coin had a wide 
circulation, especially from the eighth to 
the thirteenth centuries, in the coun¬ 
tries of Western Europe, where, with 
the exception of Spain, these lands had 
no gold currency of their own. 


clumsy Roman numerals. Algebra and alchemy (chemistry) 
are Arabic in origin; and while Europe still treated disease from 
the viewpoint of an Indian 

.llSSllfes 


“medicine man,” the Sara¬ 
cens had established, on 
Greek foundations, a real 
science of medicine. But in 
the eleventh century, polit¬ 
ical supremacy in the Mo¬ 
hammedan world fell to the 
Turks, a barbarous Tartar 
people from beyond the 
Jaxartes. The Arab cul¬ 
ture survived long enough 
to be transplanted into 
Europe, but in its own home it was doomed to swift decay. 

The Turks were mighty soldiers, and they began a new era 
of Mohammedan conquest. Almost at once the greater part of 

the Greek Empire fell into their 
hands. They overran Asia Minor, 
almost to the gates of Constanti¬ 
nople. In terror, the Greek Em¬ 
peror turned to Western Christen¬ 
dom for aid; and this appeal was 
the signal for two centuries of war, 
“Cross” against “Crescent.” 

This call for aid against the in¬ 
fidel would have produced little 
effect, however, if Western Europe 
had not had deep grievances of its 
own against the Turk. Pilgrim¬ 
ages to holy shrines were a leading 
feature of medieval life. Good 
men made them to satisfy religious 
enthusiasm; evil men, to secure 



forgiveness for crime ; sick men, to heal bodily ills. A pilgrimage 
was an act of worship. Chief of all pilgrimages, of course, was 


The 

Turkish 
peril in 
the East 


The Greek 
Empire calls 
on the West 
to save it 
from the 
Turk 


The Turks 
abuse 
Christian 
pilgrims 






296 


THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300 


The 

Crusades 


Importance 
of the 
Crusades 


Intellectual 

results 


Growth of 
Commerce 


that to the land where Christ had lived and to the tomb where 
His body had been laid. The Saracens had permitted these pil¬ 
grimages ; but the Turks, when they captured Jerusalem from 
the Arabs, began at once to persecute all Christians there. 
Thus began those movements of armed pilgrims which we call 
the Crusades. Each crusader marched in part to save Eastern 
Christians, partly to avenge pilgrims from the West; and 
partly to make his own pilgrimage to the holiest of shrines. 
Mingled with these motives, too, was the spirit of adventure 
and the greed for gain in land or gold. 

From 1096 to almost 1300 there was constant fighting in the 
East between Christian and Mohammedan. Europe, which in 
the ninth century had been helpless against plundering heathen 
bands, had now grown strong enough to pour into Asia for two 
hundred years a ceaseless stream of mailed knights, with count¬ 
less followers. For almost the first half of that period the Chris¬ 
tians did hold all or most of the Holy Land, broken into various 
“Latin” principalities, and defended against the reviving Mo¬ 
hammedan power by “Orders” of fighting monks — the 
Templars, the Knights of St. John, and the Teutonic Order. 
But at the end, the Mohammedans had expelled Europe wholly 
from Asia. 

This was mainly because Europe had outgrown the 
crusading movement. The Crusades themselves had created 
a new Europe. Trade had grown, and society was no longer 
so exclusively made up of fighters. The indirect results of the 
Crusades were vastly more important than the recovery of 
Palestine would have been. New energies were, awakened; 
new worlds of thought opened. The intellectual horizon 
widened. The crusaders brought back new gains in science, art, 
architecture, medical skill; and Europe had learned that there was 
more to learn. Many Oriental products (p. 294) became almost 
necessaries of life. Some of them were soon grown or manu¬ 
factured in Europe. Others, like spices, could not be produced 
there; and, in consequence, commerce with distant parts of 
Asia grew enormously. In the absence of fresh meat in winter 
and of our modern root-foods (p. 276), spices became of immense 
























































-_U_ 1 _ 


































AND THEIR RESULTS 


297 


importance for the table. For a time, Venice and Genoa, 
assisted by their favorable positions, monopolized much of the 
new carrying trade; but all the ports of Western Europe were 
more or less affected. This commercial activity called for 
quicker methods of reckoning, and so Europe adopted the 
Arabic numerals. Money replaced barter. Bankers appeared, 
alongside the old Jew money-lenders; and coinage increased. 

All this undermined both the economic and the military 
basis of feudalism. Money made it unnecessary for the tenant 
to pay rent in service, and enabled the kings to collect “ taxes,” 
so as to maintain standing armies. Moreover, the Crusades 
swept away the old feudal nobility directly. Hundreds of 
thousands of barons and knights squandered their possessions 
in preparing for the expedition, and then left their bones in 
Palestine. The ground was cleared for the rising city democ¬ 
racies and the new monarchies. 

And these two new forces at first were allies. The “ third 
estate” wanted order, and the kings could help secure it. The 
kings wanted money, and the third estate could supply it. 
Kings and towns joined hands to reduce feudalism to a form. 
True, a new nobility grew up — but it had only the honors 
of the old, without its power. 

II. RISE OF THE TOWNS, 1100-1300 

From 500 to 1100 a.d. the three figures in European life had 
been the tonsured priest, the mailed horseman, and the field 
laborer, stunted and bent. In the twelfth century, alongside 
priest, noble, and peasant there stood out a fourth figure — the 
sturdy, resolute, self-confident burgher. The age of the Crusades 
was also the age of the rise of towns. 

In Italy and southern France, some old Roman towns had 
lived along, with shrunken population, subject to neighboring 
lords. Under the new commercial conditions after 1200, these 
districts became dotted once more with self-governing cities, 
with municipal institutions molded, in part at least, upon those 
brought down from Roman times. Elsewhere the towns were 
mainly new growths — from peasant villages. Most were 


Feudalism 

undermined 


The towns 
and the 
eudal lords 


Origin of 
the towns 



298 


THE RISE OF TOWNS 


Town 
charters 
won in two 
centuries of 
revolt 


Town life 
in the 
feudal age 


small. Very few had more than four or five thousand 
people. 

At first each inhabitant of a growing town remained directly 
dependent upon the town’s feudal lord. The first advance toward 

freedom was to change 
this individual depend¬ 
ence into collective de¬ 
pendence. The town 
demanded the right to 
“ bargain collectively ” 
(through its elected 
officers) with the lord 
as to services and dues, 
to be paid by the whole 
town, not by individ¬ 
ual citizens; and after 
two centuries of revolt 
(1100-1300), by stubborn heroism and by wise use of their wealth, 
they had won charters guaranteeing this and greater privileges. 

Town life showed new wants, new comforts, new occupations. 
Thatched hovels, with dirt floors, gave way to comfortable, 
and even stately, burghers’ homes. Universal misery and 
squalor among the industrial classes were replaced, for a large 
part of the population, by happy comfort. There followed a 
lavish expenditure for town halls and cathedrals and for civic 
feasts and shows. 

Still, the medieval European city fell far behind the ancient 
Roman city or the contemporary Arabian city. There were 
no street lights at night, no city water supply, no sewerage, no 
street-cleaning, no paving. The necessity of inclosing the town 
within lofty stone walls crowded it into small space, so that 
streets were always narrow and dark. Dead animals rotted in 
these streets; pigsties or loose swine obstructed them; and on 
one occasion in the fifteenth century a German emperor, warmly 
welcomed in a loyal city, was almost swallowed up, horse and 
rider, in the bottomless filth. Within doors, too, the material 
prosperity was not for all. Says Dr. Jessopp, “The sediment 



Siege of a Medieval Town : the summons 
to surrender. — From a sixteenth-century 
copper engraving. 





PLATE XLV 



Town Hall (Hdtel de Ville ) at Oudenarde, Belgium, built in the thir¬ 
teenth century and still in use. See also page 318. 









PLATE XLVI 



Old Street in Rouen. — Present condition. Probably the appearance has 
changed little since the fourteenth century. The Cathedral is visible 
where the street at its further end opens into the square. 
















AND TOWN LIFE 


299 


of the town population was a dense slough of stagnant misery, 
squalor, famine, loathsome disease, and dull despair.” 

There was no adequate police system, and street fights were 
constant. At night, no well-to-do citizen stirred abroad with¬ 
out his armor and his guard of stout apprentice lads; and he had 
to fortify and guard his house at all times. The citizen, how¬ 
ever safe from feudal tyranny, lived in bondage to countless 
necessary but annoying town regulations. When “curfew” 
rang, he must “cover his fire” and put out lights — a precau¬ 
tion against conflagration particularly necessary because of the 
crowded narrow streets, the flimsy houses, and the absence of 
fire companies and of adequate water supply. His clothing, and 
his wife’s, must be no richer than that prescribed for their par¬ 
ticular station. He must serve his turn as “watch” in belfry 
tower, on the walls, or in the streets at night. And in his daily 
labor he must work and buy and sell only according to the 
minute regulations of his gild. 

Each medieval town had its merchant gild and its many craft 
gilds. These latter were unions of artisans, — weavers, shoe¬ 
makers, glovers, bow-makers, drapers, tanners, and so on. They 
seem to have grown out of the old Roman gilds. York, a 
small English city of some two or three thousand people, had 
fifty such gilds. Cologne had eighty. Even the homes of a 
gild were grouped together. One street was the street of the 
armorers; another, of the goldsmiths; and so on. 

Each craft gild contained three classes of members, — masters, 
journeymen, and apprentices. The master owned a shop, 
— probably part of the house where his family lived, — and 
employed one or more journeymen, besides a band of appren¬ 
tices. Apprentices were boys or youths bound out by their 
parents for a term of years to learn the trade. They lived in 
the master’s house, ate at his table, and he furnished their 
| clothing and taught them “all he knew.” After six or seven 
years, when his term of service was up, the apprentice became 
a free journeyman, working for wages. For the next few years 
| he traveled from place to place, practicing his trade in various 
cities, to see the world and to perfect himself in his “mystery,” 


Craft and 
merchant 
gilds 






300 


THE RISE OF TOWNS 


as the secrets of the trade were called. If he could save the 
small amount of money needed, he finally set up a shop of his 
own and became a master. As a master, he continued to work 
with his own hands, living among his dependents with a more or 
less paternal care over them. 

The gild was not organized, as the modern trade-union is, 
to regulate the relations of workmen to employers. It was a 
brotherhood, containing both workmen and employers. Its 

purposes were (1) to pre¬ 
vent competition (and so 
all who practiced the trade 
were forced to enter the 
gild and abide by its rules) ; 

(2) to prevent monopoly of 
materials or of opportunity 
by any of its members (and 
so each “ brother ” had a 
right to share in any pur¬ 
chase by another, and no 
one could sell except at ap¬ 
pointed times and places); 

(3) to keep up the price 
(which was fixed by the 
gild); and (4) to maintain, 
a high standard of goods 
(and so the gild punished 
severely all adulterations, 

the mixing of poor wool with good, and the giving short weight). 
Thus the gild aimed to protect both producer and consumer. 

The gild was also a fraternal insurance society. Moreover, 
it had social features, and indeed it often originated as a social 
club for men engaged in the same trade. Throughout the 
Middle Ages the gild feasts were the chief events in the lives 
of gild members. 



A Medieval Cooper’s Workshop, from 
an early sixteenth-century engraving. 


For a time it seemed that Europe might be dominated 
by city leagues, like ancient Greece. The Hanseatic League 
























LEARNING AND ART 


301 


(eighty North German towns, with “factories” in foreign 
cities over all North Europe) fought at times with the mightiest 
kings, and won. Similar unions of free towns appeared in 
every land. But in Italy, by 1350, nearly every city had fallen 
under the rule of a tyrant; in France they came completely 
under the despotic power of the king; in Germany they became 
only one more element in the political chaos; in England they 
never secured the extreme independence which they possessed 
for a time in other lands; Europe moved on to a national life. 

III. LEARNING AND ART, 1100-1300 

The “Dark Ages” (500 to 1100) saw a gleam of promise 
in Charlemagne’s day, and some remarkable English and Irish 
schools flourished just before Charlemagne, and again in the 
day of Alfred. But these were mere points of light in a vast 
gloom. As a whole, for six hundred years the only schools were 
those connected with monasteries and cathedrals; and these 
aimed only to fit for the duties of the clergy. 

About 1100, Europe began to stir from this intellectual torpor. 
Some of the new towns set up trades schools, with instruction 
in the language of the people; and in leading cities, in France, 
Italy, and England, the medieval university appeared. By 
1400, fifty universities dotted Europe, some of them with many 
thousand students. A fifth figure came into European life: 
alongside peasant, knight, priest, townsman, there moved now in 
cap and gown the lay student or learned “ doctor,” the forerunner 
of the modern “professional man.” 

But the universities did not make good their first promise. 
The University of Paris, the first medieval university, had grown 
up about a great teacher, Abelard. Abelard was a fearless 
seeker after truth. Alone among the scholars of his age, he 
dared to call “reason” the test of truth, even in the matter 
of church doctrines. But the church condemned this heresy, 
and forced the rising universities to forswear “ reason” for “ author¬ 
ity” This stifled all inquiry. When the intellectual rebirth 
of Europe finally came, after those two centuries, it came 
from outside university walls. 


Few schools 
in the “Dark 
Ages ” 


Rise of the 
universities 
after noo 


The 

universities 
ruled by 
tradition, 
not by 
reason 





302 


THE FEUDAL AGE, 1100-1300 


The School¬ 
men 


Medieval 

science 



The method of reasoning used in the universities is called 
scholasticism. It was like the reasoning we use in geometry, 
— deducing a truth from given premises or axioms. This 
method ignores observation and experiment and investigation, 
and has no value, by itself, except in mathematics. It has 
never discovered a truth in nature or in man. The men of the 
universities (Schoolmen) did not use it in mathematics. They 
tried to use it by turning it upon their own minds, and their 
arguments were mainly quibbles upon verbal distinctions. Much 


Workshop of Etienne Delaulne, a celebrated goldsmith at Paris in the 
sixteenth century. Drawn and engraved by himself. 

time they spent in playing with such questions as, How many 
spirits can dance at one time upon the point of a needle ? 

The last of the famous Schoolmen was Duns the Scot, who 
died in 1308. In that day there was no higher praise for a 
young scholar than to call him “a Duns.” Before many years, 
when a new scientific method had come in (pp. 324 ff.), the term 
came to be our “dunce.” 

A very little “science” crept into Europe by 1200 from the 
Arabs, mainly in astronomy and chemistry. But the astronomy 
















































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LEARNING AND ART 


303 


was mostly astrology (p. 38). And chemistry (alchemy) was 
little more than a search for the “philosopher’s stone,” which 
should change common metals into gold, or for the “elixir of 
life,” a drink to make man immortal. Both astrologers and 
alchemists mingled their studies with magic incantations and 
were generally believed to have sold their souls to the Devil 
s in return for forbidden knowledge. 

No doubt there were many men, whose names we have never A fore- 
heard, who were trying through those weary centuries really 
to study into the secrets of nature in a scientific way, by experi- science 
ment. The greatest man of this kind before 1300 was Roger 
Bacon, an English Franciscan. While Duns Scotus was admired 
and courted by all the world, Roger Bacon was living in lone¬ 
liness and poverty, noticed only to be persecuted or reviled. 

He spent his life in trying to point out the lacks of the School¬ 
men’s method and to teach true, scientific principles. Fourteen 
years he lay in dungeons, for his opinions. When at liberty, 
he worked devotedly, but under heavy handicaps. More than 
once he sought all over Europe for a copy of some book he 
needed — when a modern scholar in like case would need only 
to send a note to the nearest bookseller. He wrote upon 
the possibility of reaching Asia by sailing west into the Atlantic. 

He learned much about explosives, and is said to have invented 
gunpowder. It is believed, too, that he used lenses as a tele¬ 
scope. Apparently he foresaw the possibility of using steam 
as a motive power. Certainly he prophesied that in time 
wagons and ships would move “with incredible speed” without 
horses or sails, and also that man would learn to sail the air. 
i His “Great Work” was a cyclopedia of the knowledge of his 
time in geography, mathematics, music, and physics. But 
Roger Bacon lived a century too soon for his own good, and 
found no successful disciples. 


Latin, a mongrel Latin, too, was the sole language of the Literature 
university and of learning; and until 1200, except for the songs of 

of wandering minstrels, it was practically the only language of the people 
any kind of literature. About that time, however, in various after 1200 









304 


THE FEUDAL AGE, 1100-1300 


Art in the 

Middle 

Ages 


lands popular poetry of a high order began to appear in the lan¬ 
guage of everyday speech: the Song of the Cid in Spanish; the 
love songs of the Troubadours in French and of the Minnesingers 
in German; the Divine Comedy of Dante in Italian; and, 
toward 1400, the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer in New English, 
with Wyclif’s translation of the Bible into the same tongue. 

Classical art was lost, through the Dark Ages, as completely 
as classical learning. Medieval painting existed only in rude 
altar pieces, representing stiff saints and Madonnas, where 
even the flowing draperies could not hide the artist’s ignorance 
of how to draw the human body. On a minute scale, to be sure, 
there was some better work. Monks “ illuminated ” missals with 
tiny brushes in brilliant colors, and sometimes with beauty and 
delicacy. 

Architecture, too, was rude until after 1100. But in the 

twelfth and thirteenth cen¬ 
turies, the heavy Roman¬ 
esque style gave way to 
the Gothic, and the world 
gained one of its wonders 
in the Gothic cathedral — 
“a religious aspiration in 
stone.” (See especially the 
following Plates XLVII, 
XLVIII, and explana¬ 
tions, and also Plate L 
and page 288.) 

This device meets the “side-thrust” of the roof, and so permitted the 
architect to cut out most of the upper wall into the tall windows here 
shown. These flying buttresses carry that “thrust” to the top of the 
lower wall (see any of the Cathedral cuts), where in turn it is met, in 
part, by solid buttresses reaching from the ground wall to the top. These 
lower buttresses are not in themselves beautiful, though they make possi- ' 
ble other beautiful arrangements (see Plates following) ; but the flying 
buttresses themselves are a strikingly beautiful feature. 







PLATE XLVII 



.TRheims Cathedral. — This supremely beautiful example of Gothic archi¬ 
tecture (p. 304), dating back almost to the year 1200, was wantonly 
injured by German shells in the World War. Until 1100, the rather rude 
architecture of Western Europe was the Romanesque , based upon Roman 
remains and marked by the round arch and massive walls. The early 
architects knew no better way to carry the weight of immense stone roofs; 
nor did they dare weaken their gloomy walls even by cutting out large win¬ 
dows. In the 13th century, that Romanesque style was replaced by a 
new French style called Gothic. The architect, a better engineer now, had 
learned two new devices to carry his roofs. (See Plate XLVIII.) 































PLATE XLVIII 



The Cathedral at Metz. — A beautiful example of Gothic architecture, 
begun in the thirteenth century. (The piles of chairs are interesting as 
showing the method of seating, even to-day, in European cathedrals, 
where pews are practially unknown. The cathedrals are open all day, 
but the chairs are used only during special services.) 

The weight of the roof is carried by gathering it at certain points, by 
using converging arches, which rested on groups of mighty pillars. The 
side thrust upon the walls was met, too, by placing buttresses at critical 
points. Thus the Gothic architect could use a lighter, more varied, more 
graceful pointed arch, with tall windows ornamented curiously with tracery 
(openings in the stonework) and with moldings. He could also use 
stained glass, since now he had light enough; and the old round ceilings 
gave way to vaulted ceilings, where the ribs of converging arches inter¬ 
sected one another. The tower, too, with its heaven-pointing spire, 
replaced the Roman dome. See Plate facing p. 313. 































































PART VII-AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE, 
1300-1500 


CHAPTER XXXn 

ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 1300-1500 


I 



We left the story of England with the great Edward, who had The 
the wisdom to adopt and perfect the Parliament of the rebel year? War 

Simon. In 1327 Parliament_( 1338 - 1453 ) 

deposed the weak second Ed¬ 
ward. Then the third Edward 
began the Hundred Years’ War 
with France (1338-1453). On 
the surface, this war was a 
struggle between kings for 
prestige and territory: but at 
bottom it was a commercial 
struggle. Every country, in 
that day, shackled foreign mer¬ 
chants with absurd restrictions 


and ruinous tolls. England 
wanted to sell her wool freely 
in Flemish towns and to buy 
Bordeaux wines freely in the 
south of France; and the 
easiest way to get access to 
these markets seemed to be to 
conquer France. 

The war was waged on 
French soil. The English won 
brilliant victories, overran Frt 


A Bombard. — From a sixteenth- 
century German woodcut. An old 
chronicler tells us that at Cr6cy the 
English had some small “ bom¬ 
bards, ” which, with fire and noise 
like God’s thunder, threw little iron 
balls to frighten the horses. These 
first cannons were made by fastening 
bars of iron together with hoops; 
and the powder was very weak. A 
century later they began to be used 
to batter down castles and city walls 
It was longer still before firearms 
replaced the bow for infantry. 

nee repeatedly, ravaging crops, 


France 

ravaged 


burning peasant villages, turning the country into a black- 

305 







306 


THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 


Battle of 
Crecy, 1346 


The Black 
Death 


And the 
decay of 
serfdom in 
England 


ened desert in the usual fashion of warfare in those chivalrous 
days, and bringing home much plunder — robes, furs, feather 
beds, kitchen utensils, some rich plate, and some coin from the 
ransom of “noble” prisoners. The whole century of horrible 
and meaningless slaughter had just one gleam of promise for the 
future world. This was given by the battle of Crecy. An Eng- 
glish army was trapped apparently by five times their num¬ 
ber. But the English yeomen — men of the six-foot bow and 
yard-long shafts feathered from gray-goose wings — coolly 
faced the ponderous mass of French knights, repulsed charge 
after charge of that gallantest chivalry of Europe, and won 
back for the world the long-lost equality of the footman with 
the feudal horseman in war (1346). 

For a time, toward 1400, the war languished because pesti¬ 
lence was slaying men faster than steel could. The Black 
Death, most famous of famous plagues, had been devastating 
the continent for years, moving west from Asia. At least a 
third of the population of Europe was carried off by it. Then, 
in the year after Crecy, the returned victors brought it to Eng¬ 
land, where, almost at a blow, it swept away half the nation. 

This loss fell most heavily of course upon the working classes, 
but it helped those left alive to rise out of serfdom, — a move¬ 
ment already well under way there. The lack of labor doubled 
wages, too, and so brought in a higher standard of living. 

True, Parliament tried, in the interest of the landlords, to 
keep down the labors by foolish and tyrannical laws, — for¬ 
bidding them to leave the parish where they lived or to take 
more wages than had been customary in the past, and ordering 
them under cruel penalties to serve any one who offered them 
such wages. There were many individual cases, too, of bitter 
tyranny, where some lord, by legal trickery or by outright 
violence, forced half-freed villeins back into serfdom. Thus 
among the peasants there was long smoldering a fierce and just 
discontent. 

Another set of causes fanned this discontent into flame. The 
huge wealth of the church and the worldliness of the greater 
clergy were becoming a common scandal. Even the gentle 




ENGLAND AND FRANCE 


307 


Chaucer (p. 304), court poet though he was, wrote in keen raillery 
a)f these faults. More serious and less happy men could not 
dismiss them with a jest. The priest, John Wyclif, a famous 
lecturer at the University of Oxford, preached vigorously against 
such abuses, and finally attacked even some central teachings 
of the church. He denied the doctrine of transubstantiation, 1 
and insisted that even ignorant men might know the will of God, 
through the Bible, without priestly intervention. Accord¬ 
ingly, with his companions, he made the first complete transla¬ 
tion of the Bible into English; and his disciples wrote out many 
copies (printing was still a century in the future) and distrib¬ 
uted them throughout the land. 

These disciples called themselves “poor preachers.” Their 
enemies called them “Lollards” (babblers). Some of them 
exaggerated their master’s teachings against wealth, and called 
for the abolition of all rank and property. John Ball, one of 
these “mad preachers,” attacked the privileges of the gentry in 
rude rhymes that rang through England from shore to shore, — 

“When Adam delved and Eve span, 

Who was then the gentleman ? ” 

“This priest/' says Froissart, a contemporary chronicler, “used often¬ 
times to go and preach when the people in the villages were coming out 
from mass; and he would make them gather about him, and would say 
thus : ‘Good people, things go not well in England, nor will, till every¬ 
thing be in common and there no more be villeins and gentlemen. By 
what right are they whom we call lords greater folk than we ? We be all 
come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve, . . . but they 
are clothed in velvet and are warm in their furs, while we shiver in rags; 
they have wine, and spices, and fair bread; and we, oat cake and straw, 
and water to drink; they dwell in fine houses, and we have the pain and 
travail, the rain and the wind in the fields. From our labor they keep 
their state. Yet we are their bondmen; and unless we serve them 
readily, we are beaten.’ And so the people would murmur one with 
the other in the fields, and in the ways as they met together, affirming 
that John Ball spoke truth.” 

In 1377 Edward’s grandson, Richard II, came to the throne 
as a mere boy; and, while the government was in confusion, 

1 That at the Mass the bread and wine were changed miraculously 
into the very flesh and blood of Christ. 


Wyclif and 
the Lollards 


John 

Ball 




The 

Peasant 
Rising 
of 1381 


Wat 

the Tyler 


308 THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 

and England in this seething discontent, Parliament passed a 
heavy poll tax, bearing unfairly upon the poor. This match 
set the realm ablaze — in the “ Peasant Rising of 1381.” With 
amazing suddenness, from all sides, the peasants, rudely armed, 
marched upon London; and in a few days the king and kingdom 
were in their hands. 

The special demand of the peasantry was that all labor-rents 
should be changed into fixed money rents. They sacked some 
castles and manor houses, destroying the “manor rolls” (the 
written evidence of services due on the estate); and they put to 
death a few nobles and their lawyer tools. Women and children 



An English Carriage of the Fourteenth Century. — After Jusserand’s 
English Wayfaring Life; from a fourteenth-century psalter. This 
carriage is represented as drawn by five horses tandem, driven by two 
postilions. Such a carriage was a princely luxury, equaling in value a 
herd of from four hundred to sixteen hundred oxen. 

were nowhere injured, and there was no attempt at general 
pillage and massacre, such as usually go with servile insurrec¬ 
tions in other lands. The revolt was marked by the moderation 
of men who had a reasonable program of reform. 

Unhappily the peasants lacked organization. Their chief 
leader, Wat the Tyler , was murdered treacherously, in a con¬ 
ference— “under a flag of truce” as we would say. “Kill!” 
shouted Wat’s followers; “they have murdered our captain!” 
But the young Richard rode forward fearlessly to their front. 
“ What need ye, my masters ! ” he called; “ I am your king and 
captain.” “We will that you free us forever,” shouted the 
peasant army, “us and our land; and that we be never more 
named serfs.” “I grant it,” replied the boy; and by such 








ENGLAND AND FRANCE 


309 


pledges and by promise of free pardon he persuaded them to go 
home. For days a force of thirty clerks was kept busy writing 
out brief charters containing the king’s promises. 

But when the peasants had scattered to their villages, bear¬ 
ing to each one a copy of the king’s treacherous charter, the 
property classes rallied and took a bloody vengeance. Parlia¬ 
ment declared, indeed, that Richard’s promise was void, because 
he could not give away the gentry’s property — the services 
due them — without their consent. Richard caught gladly at 
this excuse. Quite willing to dishonor his word to mere villeins, 
he marched triumphantly through England at the head of forty 
thousand men, stamping out all hope of another rising by ruth¬ 
less execution of old leaders. Seven thousand men were put 
to death in cold blood. The men of Essex met him with copies 
of his charters, declaring that they were free Englishmen. 
“Villeins you were,” answered Richard, “and villeins you are. 
In bondage you shall abide; and not your old bondage, but a 
worse.” None the less, the emancipation began again soon 
with fresh force; and, by 1450, villeinage had passed away in 
England. 

The growth of Parliament during the Hundred Years’ War 
was almost as important as the rise of the peasants out of bond¬ 
age. Constant war made it necessary for Edward III and 
his successors to ask for many grants of money. Parliament 
supplied the king generously; but it took advantage of his needs 
to secure new powers. 

(1) It established the principle that “redress of grievances” 
must precede a “grant of supply” and at last transformed its 
“petitions” for such redress into “bills.” (2) In the closing 
years of Edward III the Good Parliament (1376) “impeached” 
and removed his ministers, using the forms that have been com¬ 
mon in impeachments ever since in English-speaking countries. 
And (3) when Richard II tried to overawe Parliament with his 
soldiery, England rose against him, and the Parliament of 1399 
deposed him, electing a cousin (Henry of Lancaster) in his place. 
(4) In the first quarter of the fifteenth century, under the Lan- 


The upper- 
class 
treachery 
and revenge 


Growth of 
Parlia¬ 
ment’s 
power 






310 


THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 


Liberties of 
Englishmen 


castrian Henrys (IV, V, VI), the House of Commons made good 
its claims that all money bills must originate with it, and 

(5) secured the right to judge of the election of its own members. 

(6) Parliament repeatedly compelled the king to dismiss his 
ministers and appoint new ones satisfactory to it, and (7) sev¬ 
eral times fixed the succession to the throne. (8) Freedom of 
speech in Parliament and freedom from arrest, except by the 
order of Parliament itself, became recognized privileges of all 
members. 

Thus under the Lancastrians there was established in the 
breasts of the English middle classes a proud consciousness of 



The Parliament of 1399, which deposed Richard II. — From a contem¬ 
porary manuscript. The faces are probably portraits. 

English liberty as a precious inheritance. With right they 
believed it superior to that possessed by any other people of the 
time. Wrote Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice under Henry VI, 
in his In Praise of the Laws of England, for the instruction of 
Henry’s son: 

“A king of England at his pleasure cannot make any alteration in the 
laws of the land without the consent of his subjects, nor burden them 
against their wills with strange impositions. . . . Rejoice, therefore, 
my good Prince, that such is the law of the kingdom you are to inherit, 









ENGLAND AND FRANCE 


311 


because it will afford both to you and to your subjects the greatest 
security and satisfaction. . . . [The king] is appointed to protect his 
subjects in their lives, properties, and laws. For this end he has the 
delegation of power from the people, and he has no just claims to any other 
power.” 


Then came the ruinous Wars of the Roses in England. This 
civil war was not merely a struggle for power between rival lords 
as Shakspere pictures it: in large measure, it was the final 
battle between the old feudal 
spirit, strong in the north of 
England, and the towns, strong 
in the south. The towns won. 

The remnants of the old no¬ 
bility were swept away in 
battle or by the headsman’s 
ax. But the middle classes 
were not yet ready to grasp 
the government, and the fruits 
of victory fell for a time to the 
new Tudor monarchs, Henry VII 
and Henry VIII. These rulers 
were more absolute than any preceding English kings. England 
entered the modern period under a “New Monarchy.” 

Still these Tudors were not “divine-right” monarchs; and 
they were shrewd enough to cloak their power under the old 
constitutional forms — and so did not challenge popular op¬ 
position. True they called Parliament rarely — and only to 
use it as a tool. But the occasional meetings, and the way in 
which the kings seemed to rule through it, saved the forms of 
constitutional government. At a later time, life was again 
breathed into those forms. Then it became plain that, in 
crushing the feudal forces, the New Monarchy had paved the 
way for a parliamentary government more complete than men 
had dreamed of in earlier' times. 



Guy’s Tower, —the Keep of War¬ 
wick Castle : the Earl of Warwick 
was a prominent leader in the 
Wars of the Roses. Read Buiwer’s 
Last of the Barons. 


The Wars 
of the 
Roses, 
1454 - 147 = 


The “ New 
Monarchy ” 
of the 
Tudors 


The forms 
of free 
government 
saved 


France came out of the Hundred Years’ War, after unspeakable 
suffering among the poor and after vast destruction of property, 



312 


THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 


French 

monarchy 

strength¬ 

ened 


with territory consolidated, with a new patriotism binding her 
people into one (a patriotism that had blossomed in Joan of 
Arc, the peasant girl liberator of her country), and with her 
kings stronger than ever. Her industrious peasantry, not for 
the last time, amazed Europe by their rapid restoration of 
prosperity in a wasted land. Louis XI (1461-1483) kept a 
small but efficient standing army, with a train of artillery that 
could easily batter the castle of any feudal rebel about his ears. 
His reign left France the most powerful single state in Europe. 

For Further Reading. — Green’s English People continues to be 
the most desirable general narrative. Lanier’s The Boy’s Froissart 
gives an entertaining contemporary story of the period. Jessopp’s 
Coming of the Friars pictures the desolation of the Black Death. 
Clemens’ (“Mark Twain’s”) Joan of Arc is history in a novel’s form. 



PLATE XLIX 



Joan of Arc relieving Orleans from the besieging English. This unschooled 
French peasant girl heard divine “voices,” she was persuaded, calling 
her to free her country from the English invader. How she did this 
maj^ best be read in Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc. This painting portrays 
an early victory which roused the French people from their despair to 
follow the “Holy Maid of Orleans.” Finally, when her work was really 
done, Joan fell into English hands and was burned as a witch, after a 
trial marked by her gentle firmness and purity and heroic endurance. 
History places her foremost among French heroes; and recently (May, 
1920) she was canonized by Pope Benedict XV. 










PLATE L 



.Salisbury Cathedral, a fine example of early English Gothic, 1200-1250. 
(The glorious elms of the Cathedral Close are now gone — cut for lumber 
during the World War.) The stone spire rises 404 feet from the ground. 
To carry such immense weight was a great engineering problem. Cf. 
text at bottom of Plates XLVII, XLVIII, to see how such problems were 
solved in this new style of architecture. Toward the extreme right one 
side of the cloisters is just visible (cf. p. 288). 





CHAPTER XXXIII 

; r- 

OTHER STATES FROM 1300 TO 1500 

Meantime the papacy was losing power. About 1300, both 
England and France challenged the papal overlordship in mat¬ 
ters of government. (Neither questioned the pope’s authority in 
religious matters.) The kings needed more revenue, and were try¬ 
ing to introduce systems of national taxation — in place of the 
outgrown feudal revenues. The clergy had been exempt from 
feudal services; but they owned so much of the wealth of the 
two countries that the kings insisted upon their paying their 
share of the new taxes. Pope Boniface VIII (1296) issued a bull 
forbidding any prince to impose taxes on the clergy without 
papal consent, and threatening excommunication against all 
clergy who paid. 

But when the English clergy, trusting in this decree, refused 
to pay taxes, Edward I outlawed them until they submitted. 
In France Philip the Fair (p. 290) forbade any payment to the 
pope, and arrested the papal legate. Boniface threatened 
to depose the king. A few days later, a company of French 
soldiers made Boniface prisoner; and the chagrin of the old 
man at the insult probably hastened his death (1303). 

Philip then secured the election of a French pope, who removed 
the papal capital from Rome to Avignon, in southern France. 
Here the popes remained for seventy years (1309-1377), in 
“the Babylonian Captivity of the church.” Of course the 
papacy lost public respect. It was no longer an impartial umpire. 
Politically it had sunk into a mere tool of the French kings, and 
the enemies of France could not be expected to show it rever¬ 
ence. In Italy, too, the Papal States themselves fell into 
anarchy, and there was danger that the popes might lose that 
principality. 


The conflict 
in France 


“ The 
Babylonian 
Captivity ” 


313 



314 


THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 


Rival 
“ popes ” 


The 

Lollard 

heresy 


The Hussite 
heresy 


The Council 
of Con¬ 
stance, 1414 


In 1377, to save the papal territory, Gregory XI visited 
Rome. This act brought on a greater disaster even than the 
exile itself. Gregory died while at Rome. The cardinals were 
obliged at once to choose a successor. They were Frenchmen 
(as all high church offices had been given to Frenchmen during 
the scandal of the Captivity); but even French cardinals did 
not dare disregard the savage demands of the people of Rome 
for an Italian pope, and so they chose Urban VI. Urban estab¬ 
lished himself in the old papal seat at Rome; but, a few months 
later, the cardinals assembled again, declared that the choice 
of Urban was void because made under compulsion, and elected 
a French pope, Clement VII, who promptly returned to Avignon. 

Urban and Clement excommunicated each other, each devot¬ 
ing to the devil all the supporters of the other. Which pope 
should good Christians obey? The answer was determined 
mainly by political considerations. France obeyed Clement; 
England and Germany obeyed Urban. 

This condition encouraged other disunion movements. 
The Wyclif movement in England (p. 307) took place toward 
the close of the exile at Avignon. The church declared Wyclif 
a heretic; but he was protected during his life by one of King 
Edward’s sons. Soon after Wyclif’s death, however, the Lan¬ 
castrian monarchs began to persecute his followers. In 1401, 
for the first time, an Englishman was burned for heresy, and the 
Lollards finally disappeared. But meantime, the seeds of the 
heresy had been scattered in a distant part of Europe. Richard 
II of England married a princess of Bohemia, and some of her 
attendants carried the teachings of Wyclif to the Bohemian Univer¬ 
sity of Prague. About 1400, John Hus, a professor at Prague, be¬ 
came a leader in a radical “ reform” much after Wyclif’s example, 
and the movement spread rapidly over much of Bohemia. 

Great and good men everywhere, especially in the powerful 
universities, began now to call for a General Council as the only 
means to restore unity of church government and doctrine; and 
finally one of the popes called the Council of Constance (1414). 
Five thousand delegates were present, representing all Chris¬ 
tendom. With recesses, the Council sat for four years. It 



























































































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THE CHURCH AND THE PAPACY 


315 


induced one pope to resign his office, and it deposed the other 
claimants. Then it restored unity by electing a new pope, 
Martin V, to rule from Rome. 

Next the Council turned its attention to restoring church 
doctrine. John Hus was present, under a “safe conduct” 
from the Emperor. His teachings were declared heresy; but 
neither persuasion nor threats could move him to recant. “It 
is better for me to die,” he said, “than to fall into the hands 
of the Lord by deserting the truth.” Despite the Emperor’s 
solemn pledge for his safety, Hus was burned at the stake, 
and his ashes were scattered in the Rhine (1415). Then Wyclif’s 
doctrines, too, were condemned; and, to make thorough work, 
his ashes were disinterred from their resting place and scattered 
on the river Swift. 

These vigorous measures did not wholly succeed. Hus 
became a national hero to Bohemia. That country rose in 
arms against the church. A crusade was preached against 
the heretics, and years of cruel war followed ; but some survivals 
of Hussite teachings lasted on into the period of the Protestant 
Revolt a century later. The papacy never regained its earlier 
authority over kings. Nicholas V (1447) showed himself a 
learned scholar, eager to advance learning, as well as a pure 
and gentle man. Pius II (1455) strove to arouse a new crusade 
against the Turks, who had at last captured Constantinople; 
but his complete failure proved (in his own words) that Europe 
“ looked on pope and emperor alike as names in a story.” Some 
of the succeeding popes, like the notorious Borgia (Alexander VI, 
1492-1503), were busied mainly as Italian princes, building 
up their temporal principality by intrigue and craft such as 
was common at that day in Italian politics. 

The “ Holy Roman Empire ,” it has been explained, had come 
to mean merely Germany. The anarchy of the “Fist-law” 
period was checked in 1273 by the election of Rudolph of Haps- 
burg as Emperor. Rudolph was a petty count of a rude district 
in the Alps (“Hawks’ nest”), and the princes had chosen him 
because tney thought him too weak to rule them. The king of 


The last 
popes of 
the Middle 
Ages 


Germany 
and the 
Hapsburgs 





316 


THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 


Spain at the 
end of the 
Middle 
Ages 


Bohemia, indeed, refused to recognize him as Emperor. Ru¬ 
dolph attacked Bohemia, and seized from it the duchy of Aus¬ 
tria, which until recently has remained the chief seat of the 
Hapsburgs. In other ways he showed the now-familiar Haps- 
burg zeal to widen his personal domain. “Sit firm on Thy 
throne, O Lord,” prayed one bishop, “or the Count of Hapsburg 
will shove Thee off.” 

After Rudolph’s death, the princes of the Empire (the Elec¬ 
toral College) passed the throne from family to family — until, 
in 1438, after a long line of Bohemian rulers, the imperial dig¬ 
nity came back to the Hapsburgs by the election of Albert, 
Duke of Austria. From this time, so long as the title endured, 
the “Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire ” was of the House of 
Austria , and election became a form only. 

Maximilian I (1493-1519), the one romantic hero of the 
Hapsburg race, made a noble effort to bring Germany abreast 
of England and France. In the end he failed utterly, and 
Germany entered the Modern Age a loose confederacy of many 
petty sovereign states grouped about Austria. 

The Mohammedan invasion of 711 (p. 254), separated the 
development of Spain from that of the rest of Europe. For 
centuries, “Africa began at the Pyrenees.” 

The wave of Moorish invasion, however, left unconquered 
a few resolute Christian chiefs in the remote fastnesses of the 
northwestern mountains, and in these districts several little 
Christian principalities began the long task of winning back their 
land, crag by crag and stream by stream. This they accom¬ 
plished in eight hundred years of war, — a war at once patriotic 
and religious, Spaniard against African, and Christian against 
Infidel. The long struggle left the Spanish race proud, brave, 
warlike, unfitted for industrial civilization, intensely patriotic, 
and blindly devoted to the church. 

During the eight centuries of conflict, the Christian states 
spread gradually to the south and east, — waxing, fusing, 
splitting up into new states, uniting in kaleidoscopic combina¬ 
tions by marriage and war, — until, before 1400, they had 




PLATE LI 



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foutfon'tefxntymtxt 




III 

mm > ;i 

l|rAQmj 

W3 

B. / ij 


Rsli 



Illustration from a Fifteenth Century Manuscript, showing in the 
foreground Maximilian of Austria, Mary of Burgundy, and their son 
Phili p (p. 320). The original is in colors- 



























































PLATE LII 



Church of St. Sophia, Constantinople, built by Justinian upon the site 
of an earlier church of the same name by Constantine. The whole 
interior is lined with costly, many-colored marbles. The interior view 
shows only a part of the vast dome, with eighteen of the forty windows 
which run about its circumference of some 340 feet. In 1453 the building 
became a Mohammedan mosque (p. 317). (The pointed minarets adjoin¬ 
ing are Saracenic.) 














SPAIN —THE TURKS 


317 


formed the three countries, Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. 
Nearly a century later, the marriage of Isabella of Castile and 
Ferdinand of Aragon united the two larger states, and in 1492 
their combined power captured Granada, the last Moorish 
stronghold. In the year that Columbus discovered America 
under Spanish auspices, Spain at home achieved national union 
and national independence. During the next two reigns, the 
Spanish monarchy, financed by the treasures of Mexico and Peru, 
became the most absolute in Europe. 

While the civilized Mohammedan Moors were losing Spain, 
barbarous Mohammedan Turks were gaining southeastern Europe. 
They established themselves on the European side of the Helles¬ 
pont first in 1346. Constantinople held out for a century more, 
a Christian island encompassed by seas of Mohammedanism. 
But at Kossova (1389), the Turks completed the overthrow of 
the Serbs, and a few years later a crushing defeat was inflicted 
upon the Hungarians and Poles. Then, in 1453, Mahomet the 
Conqueror entered Constantinople through the breach where the 
heroic Constantine Palaeologus, last of the Greek emperors, 
died sword in hand. 

The Turks, incapable of civilization, always remained a hostile 
army encamped among subject Christian populations, whom 
their rule blighted. After 1453, Constantinople was the capital 
of their empire. That empire continued to expand for a century 
more (until about 1550), and for a time it seemed as though 
nothing could save Western Europe. Venice on sea , and Hun¬ 
gary by land, were long the two chief outposts of Christendom, 
and, almost unaided, they kept up ceaseless warfare to check the 
Mohammedan invaders. For a time, Hungary was conquered, 
and then Austria became the bulwark for Western Europe. 

The Netherlands (Low Countries) did not form an independent 
state in the Middle Ages. They were made up of a group of 
provinces, part of them fiefs of the Empire, part of them French 
fiefs. The southern portion has become modern Belgium ; the 
northern part, modern Holland. The land is a low, level tract, 
and in the Middle Ages it was more densely packed with teeming 


The Turks 
and south¬ 
eastern 
Europe 


The 

Netherlands 





Trade and 
manufac¬ 
tures 



318 THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 

cities than any other part of Europe. The inhabitants were 
a sturdy, independent, slow, industrious, persistent people. 
Ghent claimed eighty thousand citizens able to bear arms, 
while Ypres is said to have employed two hundred thousand 
people in the weaving of cloth. Wealth so abounded that 
the “counts” of this little district excelled most of the kings 
of Europe in magnificence. 

Many of the cities, like Rotterdam and Amsterdam, were 
built on land wrested from the sea by dikes, and they took 


Hall of the Clothmakers’ Gild at Ypres. — Begun, 1200; finished, 
1364; destroyed by the Germans in the World War. 

naturally to commerce. In their markets, the merchants from 
Italy and the south of Europe exchanged wares with the Hansa 
merchants of the Baltic. And the Netherland towns were 
workshops even more than they were trading rooms. “ Nothing 
reached their shores,” says one historian, “but received a more 
perfect finish; what was coarse and almost worthless, became 
transmuted into something beautiful and good.” Matthew 
Paris, a thirteenth-century English chronicler, exclaimed that 
“the whole world was clothed in English wool manufactured in 
Flanders” 





THE “LOW COUNTRIES 


319 


During the Hundred Years’ War, the dukes of Burgundy 
became masters of Flanders. When Louis XI of France (p. 312) 
seized the rest of Burgundy from its last duke, Charles the 
Bold, the Flemish towns wisely chose to remain faithful to Mary, 
the daughter of Charles. Mary married the young Maximilian 
of Hapsburg (p. 316), and the Netherlands passed to the House of 
Austria. 

The rise of “monarchic states” is the political change that 
marks the close of the Middle Ages. At the moment it seemed 
a disaster to many great and good men, like the Italian Dante, 
who had their minds fixed on the old ideal of a united Christen¬ 
dom. But, since the days of the old Roman empire, Europe 
had never known a true union. The real mission of each of the 
new monarchies, whether the monarchs saw it yet or not, was to 
weld all the classes within its land into one people with a common 
patriotism. 

We have noted the rise of new powerful monarchies in Eng¬ 
land, France, Spain, and Austria. Like governments had ap¬ 
peared in Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland. 
Two small lands, Switzerland and the Netherlands, were loosely 
connected with the Austrian Hapsburg monarchy. Two great 
lands had no part in the movement: until 1250, Germany 
and Italy had been the center of interest; but their claim for 
universal rule had left them broken in fragments. Not for 
centuries were they to reach this new form of united monarchic 
government. Leadership, therefore, passed from them to France, 
Spain, and England, — the three countries in which the new 
movement was most advanced. In Italy, soon after 1250 
the city republics (p. 300) fell under the rule of “tyrants”; 
and by 1450 the many petty divisions had been brought under 
one or another of “ Five Great States ” — the Kingdom of Sicily, 
the Papal States, Milan, Florence, and Venice. Then France 
and Spain waged wars for the mastery of these; and Spain 
was left mistress of Sicily and Naples. 

Now swift steps brought the Hapsburg power within sight of a 
world-monarchy. Ferdinand of Aragon had married one daugh- 


The“New 
Monarch¬ 
ies ” in 
Europe 


France and 
Spain in 
Italy 






320 


THE RENAISSANCE AGE, 1300-1500 


The danger 
of a world- 
despotism 


Failure of 
Charles 


ter to the young English prince soon to become Henry VIII, 
and another to Philip of Hapsburg, son of the Emperor Maxi¬ 
milian and Mary of Burgundy (p. 319). From this last mar¬ 
riage, in 1500, was born a child, Charles. Philip had been 
ruler of the Netherlands through his mother, Mary; and his 
early death left those rich districts to Charles while yet a boy. 
In 1516 Charles also succeeded his grandfather, Ferdinand, as 
king of Sicily and Naples and as king of Spain, with the gold-pro¬ 
ducing realms in America that had just become Spain’s. Three 
years later he succeeded his other grandfather, Maximilian, 
as the hereditary ruler of Austria, with its many dependent 
provinces. Then, still a boy of nineteen, Charles became a 
candidate for the title of Emperor, which Maximilian’s death 
had left vacant; and his wealth (or that of his Flemish mer¬ 
chants) enabled him to win against his rivals Francis of France 
and Henry VIII of England. 

Thus Charles I of Spain, at twenty, became also Charles V, 
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and for a while it seemed 
possible that he might more than restore the empire of the 
first great Charles (Charlemagne). Compact France, at first, 
was his only obstacle; and no time was lost by Charles and 
the French Francis I in joining battle. The battle of Pavia 
left Francis a captive, and France apparently at the Hapsburg’s 
feet. But just then (1520) an obscure monk in Germany burned 
a papal bull and started a movement which split Germany and 
Europe at once into opposing camps, and rendered forever vain 
the dream of restoring the old imperial unity of Christendom. 
When a world union comes, we see now, it is to come as a union 
of free peoples. 

We must turn back once more to note the intellectual 
change that ended the Middle Ages and prepared the way for 
that revolt within the church. 






3IVKVH3 






kV . 8 Tate® 























































































CHAPTER XXXIV 


THE RENAISSANCE, 1300-1500 

The five hundred years from 800 to 1300 make up the Age 
of Feudalism. The first three centuries (800-1100) were a 
continuation of the “Dark Ages” of the barbarian invasion, 
after the brief interruption by Charlemagne. In those gloomy 
three hundred years we noted the grim feudal system at its 
height, the medieval church, serf labor, the destructive strife 
between empire and papacy, and, at the close, the Norman 
conquest of England. 

The year 1100 was the threshold over which we passed from 
those centuries of gloom to two centuries of fruitful progress. 
That Age of the Crusades saw also the rise of towns, of univer¬ 
sities, of popular literatures, of Gothic architecture in cathe¬ 
drals and town halls, of the growth of France out of feudal 
fragments into one kingdom, and of the rise of courts and of 
Parliament in England. 

The year 1300 introduced two centuries of still more rapid 
advance. The period 1300-1520 we call the Age of the Renais¬ 
sance, because those centuries are marked by a “ rebirth” of a long- 
forgotten way of looking at life . That old way had expressed 
itself in the art and literature of the ancient Greeks. Accord¬ 
ingly, the men of the new age were passionately enthusiastic 
over all remains of the old classical period. The fundamental 
characteristic of the Renaissance, however, was not its devotion 
to the past, but its joyous self-trust in the present. The men 
of the Renaissance cared for the ancient culture because they 
found there what they themselves thought and felt. 

Between those classical times and the fourteenth century 
there had intervened centuries of very different life —which 
we have been studying. Those “Middle Ages” had three marks 
on the intellectual side. (1) Ignorance was general; and 

321 


The periods 
within the 
feudal age 


(i) The 
Dark Ages 


( 2 ) The 
Crusades 


The age of 
the Ren¬ 
aissance 


Relation to 
“ Ancient ” 
culture 


The Ren¬ 
aissance 
and the 
feudal age 


322 


THE RENAISSANCE 


The Ren¬ 
aissance 
begins in 
Italy 


even the learned followed slavishly in the footsteps of some 
intellectual master. (2) Man as an individual counted for 
little: in all his activities he was part of some gild or order or 
corporation. (3) Interest in the future life was so intense that 
many good men neglected the present life. Beauty in nature 
was little regarded, or regarded as a temptation of the devil. 

The Renaissance changed all this. (1) For blind obedience 
to authority, it substituted the free inquiring way in which the 
Ancients had looked at things. (2) Men developed new self- 
reliance and self-confidence, and a fresh and lively originality. 
And (3) they awoke to delight in flower and sky and mountain, 
in the beauty of the human body, in all the pleasures of the 
natural world. 

This transformation — one of the two or three most wonder¬ 
ful changes in all history — began first in Italy. It was well 
over in that land by 1550; while it hardly began in England un¬ 
til 1500, and there it lasted through Shakspere’s age, to about 
1600. 

Italy was the natural home for a revival in literature and art. 
Vergil had been read by a few Italian scholars all down the 
Middle Ages. The Italian language was nearer the Latin 
than any other European language was, and more manuscripts 
of the ancient Roman writers survived in Italy than else¬ 
where in Western Europe. Thus the Italian Petrarch (1304- 
1374) stands out the first great champion of the coming age. 
His graceful sonnets are a famous part of Italian poetry, but his 
real work was as a tireless critic of the medieval system. He 
attacked vehemently the superstitions and false science of the 
day; he ridiculed the universities, with their blind reverence 
for “authority,” as “nests of gloomy ignorance.” And he did 
more than destroy. He, and his disciples after him, began 
enthusiastic search for classical manuscripts and other remains, 
to recover what the ancients had possessed of art and knowl¬ 
edge, and so brought back the study of Greek to Italy. 

After 1400, the increasing peril from the Turk (and the high 
prices paid by princely Italian collectors) led 'many Greek 
scholars to flee from the East with precious manuscripts. And 



PLATE LIII 




Above. — Ca d’Oro, a Venetian Palace built in the thirteenth century. 


Below. — The Palace of the Doges (Ducal Palace ) at Venice. Vene¬ 
tian architecture was based upon the Romanesque, modified by the 
Saracenic from the south and east and by the Gothic from the north and 
west. Cf. St. Marks, facing p. 322. 













PLATE LIV 






t 


,1 







































IN THE NORTH: ERASMUS 


323 


when Constantinople fell, Greek learning “emigrated to Italy.” 
Soon the new enthusiasm for the classics ( humanism ) captured 
even the universities — which at first withstood it fiercely. 

Painting and sculpture were reborn, with the rebirth of delight 
in life. Italian painting culminated in the years from 1470 to 
1550. To these eighty years belongs the work of Leonardo da 
Vinci, Michael Angelo, Perugino, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, 
Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Correggio. A little later came 
the great periods of 
Dutch and Spanish 
painting. (The new 
development in this 
art in all these lands 
was made possible, of 
course, by new meth¬ 
ods of preparing oil 
paints, invented by 
the Van Eycks in Hol¬ 
land, so that it was 
possible to paint upon 
canvas, instead of 
only upon walls and 
ceilings.) 

In the north of 
Europe the Renais¬ 
sance was religious 
and scientific rather 
than artistic. A little 
before 1500, the “ New 
Learning” from Italy was welcomed by an enthusiastic group 
of young scholars in England, known as the “ Oxford Reformers.” 
In Italy, Petrarch and his followers had started the new science 
of “ historical criticism,” — a careful study of old and corrupted 
documents to find out their original form and true meaning. 
The Oxford Reformers developed this science into a means of 
correcting evils and errors that had crept into religion. 

This was especially true of Erasmus, a Hollander living in 



Renais¬ 
sance art 
in Italy 


The 

religious 
and scien¬ 
tific Renais¬ 
sance in 
the North 





324 


THE RENAISSANCE 


Erasmus, 

1466-1536 


Sir Thomas 
More 


Inventions 
bring a 
new age 


England. In 1516 he published the New Testament in the 
original Greek, with a careful Latin translation, and with criti¬ 
cal notes. Now, for the first time, ordinary scholars could 
test the accuracy of the common translation (the Vulgate) in 
use in the church. Afterward Erasmus edited the writings of 
many early Christian Fathers, to show the character of early 
Christianity. In another sort of works, as in his Praise of 
Folly, Erasmus lashed the false learning and foolish methods 
of the monks and Schoolmen. He has been called “ the Scholar 
of the Reformation.” But Erasmus did not break away 
from the great mother church. Instead, he worked, with 
beautiful charity and patience and largeness of view, for reform 
within it. 

Another leader of the Oxford Reformers was Sir Thomas 
More, one of the noblest Englishmen of any age. He was a 
distinguished scholar — his learning brightened by a gentle 
and pervading humor — and a man of great personal charm. 
In the year that Erasmus published his Greek Testament, More 
issued his Description of the Republic of Utopia (“Nowhere”). 
He portrays, with burning sympathy, the miseries of the English 
peasantry, and points accusingly to the barbarous social and 
political conditions of his time by contrasting with them the 
conditions in “Nowhere” — where the people elect their gov¬ 
ernment (which accordingly is devoted solely to their welfare), 
possess good homes, work short hours, enjoy absolute freedom 
of speech, high intellectual culture, and universal happiness, 
with all property in common. Utopia was the first of the many 
modern attempts to picture, in the guise of fiction, an ideal 
state of society. 

More immediate and direct influence upon the mighty change 
to a new age came from a number of new inventions that be¬ 
long to the Renaissance movement. The telescope revealed 
other worlds in the heavens. The mariner’s compass enabled 
Columbus to discover a New World on the old earth. Gun¬ 
powder (p. 305), which found its first serious use in the wars 
between Charles V and Francis I, gave the final blow to dying 
feudalism. And printing did more to create a new society 



PRINTING AND DISCOVERY 325 

than gunpowder could to destroy the old. Two of these new 
movements call for special notice. 

1. Early medieval manuscripts were all written on parch¬ 
ments. These were costly and hard to obtain in any desirable 
quantity. About 1300, to be sure, a cheaper paper was intro¬ 
duced by the Saracens; but all books had still to be written 
by the pen. Soon after 1400, engravers began to make the re¬ 
production of books cheaper by engraving each page on a block 
of wood (as the Chinese seem to have done centuries earlier). 
This was still costly. But now, about 1450, John Gutenberg, 
at Mainz, found out how to “ cast ” separate metal type in molds. 

This invention of movable type reduced the price of books 
at once to a twentieth their old cost. It came, too, at a happy 
moment. It preserved the precious works recovered by the 
Humanists; and soon it was to spread broadcast the new 
thought of the Reformation. 

2. The ancients had played with the notion of sailing around 
the earth. Aristotle speaks of “persons” who held that it 
might be possible; and Strabo, a Roman geographer, suggested 
that one or more continents might lie in the Atlantic between 
Europe and Asia. But during the Middle Ages men had come 
to believe that the known habitable earth was bounded on all 
sides by an uninhabitable and untraversable world, — on the 
north by snow and ice, on the south by a fiery zone, on the west 
by watery wastes stretching down an inclined plane, up which 
men might not return, and on the east by a dim land of fog and 
fen, the abode of strange and terrible monsters. The Indian 
Ocean, too, was thought to be a lake , encompassed by the shores 
of Asia and Africa. 

These false views had been partly corrected by a better 
geographical knowledge of Asia, gained in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries. Louis IX of France sent Friar Rubruk 
as ambassador to the court of the Tartar Khan in central 
Asia*'(1264 a.d.) ; and the friar on his return reported that he 
had heard of a navigable ocean east of Cathay (China), with a 
marvelously wealthy island, Zipango (Japan). 

This rumor made a leap in men’s thought. Friar Bacon in 


New 

geographi¬ 
cal discover¬ 
ies 






328 


THE RENAISSANCE 


Discoveries 
of Henry the 
Navigator 


England (p. 303) at once raised the question whether this east¬ 
ern ocean might not be the same as the one that washed Europe 
on the west and whether men might not reach Asia by sailing 
west into the Atlantic. Indeed, Bacon wrote a book to support 
these conjectures, adding many opinions of the Ancients; and 
extensive extracts from this volume were copied into a later 
book, which was to become a favorite of Columbus. Such 
speculation implies that scholars understood the sphericity of 

had preserved the old Greek 
knowledge in this matter, and 
some European thinkers had 
been familiar with it, even in 
the “Dark Ages.” 

Now this became more than 
a curious question. The Cru¬ 
sades, we have seen, had given 
a new impulse to trade with 
the Orient, but in the fifteenth 
century, the progress of the 
Turks threatened the old trade 
routes. Constantinople, the 
emporium for the route by the 
Black Sea, fell into their hands, 
and each year their power crept 
farther south in Asia, endangering the remaining route by the 
Red Sea. Under these circumstances the question was forced 
home to Europe whether or not a new route could be found. 

The Portuguese, under Prince Henry the Navigator, had 
already been engaged in building up a Portuguese empire in 
Africa and in the islands of the Atlantic (Azores, Canary, and 
Verde 1 ); and about tl+tO they began to attempt to reach India 
by sailing around Africa. In 1486 a Portuguese captain, Bar¬ 
tholomew Dia.z, while engaged in this attempt, was carried far 
to the south in a storm, and on his return to the coast he found 
it on his left hand as he moved toward the north. He followed 

1 The name “Cape Verde” indicates the surprise of the discoverers (1450) 
at verdure so far south. 


the earth. Saracenic schools 



Monk Teaching the Globe, — an 
illustration in a thirteenth-century 
manuscript. 










Columbus before Isabella 

































* 








I 












































y- • 















































► > 
















• < 





































































































A NEW WORLD 


327 


it several hundred miles, well into the Indian Ocean. Then his 
sailors compelled him to turn back to Portugal. India was not 
actually reached until the expedition of Vasco da Gama in 
1498, after more memorable voyages in another direction. 

One of the sailors with Diaz in 1486, when in this way he 
rounded the Cape of “ Good Hope,” was a Bartholomew Colum¬ 
bus, whose brother Christopher also had sailed on several Portu¬ 
guese voyages. Now, however, for some years, Christopher 
Columbus had devoted himself to the more daring theory 
that India could be reached by sailing west into the open At¬ 
lantic. Portugal, well content with her monopoly of African 
exploration, refused to assist him to try his plan. Henry VII 
of England also declined to furnish him ships. But finally, the 
high-minded Isabella of Castile, while the siege of Granada 
was in progress, fitted out his small fleet, and in 1^92 Columbus 
revealed to Europe the continent of America — soon to be a 
chief factor in that “new world” toward which the old earth 
was now so swiftly spinning. 


Columbus 

and 

America 






PLATE LV 



St. Peter’s, Rome. — The interior view shows the have (central aisle) as 
one enters, looking east. On the right of the exterior view is shown the 
Vatican, the papal residence. 

St. Peter’s was not completed until far into the seventeenth century, but it 
owes most of its glory to the work upon it of artists of the late Renais¬ 
sance period, like Raphael and Michael Angelo. The form of this greatest 
of churches is that of a cross, surmounted, at the junction of the arms, 
by a dome 138 feet across, the dominating feature of the building and prob¬ 
ably the most famous dome in the world. 














PART VIII - THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 
1520-1648 

CHAPTER XXXV 

THE REFORMATION UPON THE CONTINENT 

I. LUTHERANISM 

The later references to the church have involved some men¬ 
tion of abuses growing up within it (pp. 306, 315). Good Chris¬ 
tians lamented those abuses. A few broad-minded, genial 
men, like Erasmus, strove earnestly to reform them. Less 
patient, more impetuous men broke away from the old church 
in a revolt which became the Protestant “Reformation.” 

The revolt began in Germany. That land lacked a strong 
government to protect it, and so its hard-won, little wealth was 
drained away to richer Italy by papal taxes of many sorts. 
Nowhere else was this condition so serious. From peasant to 
prince, the German people had long grumbled as they paid, and 
they needed only a leader to rise against papal control. 

Martin Luther, son of a Thuringian peasant-miner, became 
that leader. Luther was a born fighter, — a straightforward 
man, with a blunt, homely way that sometimes degenerated 
into coarseness. As an Augustinian friar, his effective preach¬ 
ing had attracted the attention of Duke Frederick the Wise of 
Saxony, who made him a professor of theology in the new Uni¬ 
versity of Wittenberg. 

Luther’s revolt began in his opposition to the sale of indul¬ 
gences. The pope was rebuilding St. Peter’s Cathedral at 
Rome with great magnificence. To help raise money for that 
purpose, a German archbishop had licensed John Tetzel, a Do¬ 
minican, to grant indulgences. The practice was an old one, 
arising easily out of the doctrine of “ penance.” The authorized 

329 


The need 
for religious 
reform 


Special 
abuses in 
Germany 


Martin 

Luther, 

1483-1546 


Luther and 
the sale of 
indulgences 









330 


THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 


Luther’s 

theses 

arouse 

Germany 


Luther and 
the pope 


teaching of the church was, that, in reward for some pious act 
— or for the gift of money for a pious purpose — a sinner who 
had truly repented and who had, so far as possible, atoned for 
his sins, might have the punishment due in purgatory remitted 
by the church. The ignorant masses, unable to read the Latin 
documents, often thought that such an “indulgence” was an 
unconditional pardon, — contrary to the doctrine of the church ; 
and some professional “pardoners,” who peddled such “letters,” 
encouraged this gross error. Tetzel was a special offender in 
this way. A rude German rhyme, ascribed to him, runs, “ The 
money rattles in the box; the soul from purgatory flies.” More 
than a hundred years before, the bright-souled Chaucer had 
given the only bitter lines in his Canterbury Tales to the Par¬ 
doner with his wallet “ bret-full of pardons, come from Rome 
all hot.” Now a visit of Tetzel to Wittenberg, with a batch 
of these papal letters, aroused Luther to more vehement protest. 

On a Sunday in October, 1517, Luther nailed to the door of 
the Wittenberg church ninety-five “ theses ” (statements) 
against the practice of selling indulgences, upon which he chal¬ 
lenged all comers to debate. That door was the usual uni¬ 
versity bulletin board where it was customary for one scholar 
to challenge others to debate. But Luther’s act had con¬ 
sequences far beyond the university. The theses were in Latin, 
the regular university language; but the printing press scat¬ 
tered copies broadcast in German, and in a few days they were 
being discussed hotly over all Germany. 

Soon, however, this matter dropped out of sight. The papal 
legate in Germany reprimanded Tetzel sternly for his gross 
mispractice; and the church corrected the abuse. But, mean¬ 
while, Luther adopted more radical opinions; and in 1519 he 
denied the authority of the pope, appealing instead to the Bible as 
the sole rule of conduct and belief. 1 Then when at last a papal 


1 Luther tried to substitute one authority for another. But the Bible is 
capable of many interpretations. His appeal to the Bible as the sole au¬ 
thority meant Luther’s understanding of the Bible. In the mouth of an¬ 
other man, however, the same appeal meant that other’s understanding of 
the book. So, unintentionally , the Protestant revolt came to stand for the 
right of individual judgment. 








MARTIN LUTHER 


331 



bull ordered him to recant and to burn his heretical writings, 
Luther burned instead the papal bull in a bonfire of other writings 
of the church, before the town gate in December, 1520, while a 
crowd of students and townsfolk brought fuel. 


Luther’s Defiance at Worms, — a modern painting by Von Werner. 

The pope appealed to the young emperor, Charles V (p. 320) to 
punish the heretic. Germany was in uproar. The Emperor 
called an imperial Diet 1 at Worms (1521) and summoned Luther 
to be present, pledging safe conduct. Friends tried to dissuade 
Luther from going, pointing to the fate of Hus a century before; 
but he replied merely, “I would go on if the're were as many 
devils in Worms as there are tiles on the housetops.” At the 
Diet he was confronted with scornful contempt by the great 
dignitaries of the church and of the empire. But to the haughty 
command that he recant, he answered firmly, “Unless I am 
proven wrong by Scripture or plain reason . . . my conscience 
is caught in the word of God. . . . Here I stand. As God is 
my help, I can no otherwise.” 

1 The German Diet in early times contained only nobles. In the four¬ 
teenth century, representatives of the “free cities” were admitted. Then 
the Diet sat usually in three Houses, Electors (the seven great princes), 
Princes (of second rank), and City Representatives. It never gained any 
real place in the government of the Empire. 


Luther 
burns the 
papal bull 


Luther at 
Worms 










332 


THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 


A German 
Bible 


Charles kept his pledge; but a month later the Diet pro¬ 
nounced against Luther the “ban of the Empire,” ordering that 
he be seized for execution. The friendly Frederick of Saxony, 
however, had had him seized, on his way homeward, and carried 
into hiding in the castle of Wartburg. Most of his followers 



Luther’s Room in the Wartburg. — The desk is the one at which he 
penned his translation of the Bible. The broken plaster commemorates 
an interesting incident. Believing that Satan had come to tempt him, 
Luther hurled his ink bottle at the apparition. The ink splashed the 
plaster; and visitors have picked off pieces of the bespattered wall for 
souvenirs. Luther’s picture, above the desk, is a modern addition to 
the room. 


mourned him as dead; but in this refuge Luther translated the 
New Testament into strong and simple German. While he 
was still in hiding, his teachings were accepted by whole com¬ 
munities. Priests married; nuns and monks left their con¬ 
vents ; powerful princes joined the new communion, sometimes 
from honest conviction, sometimes as an excuse for seizing 
church lands. 














LUTHERANISM WINS NORTH GERMANY 333 


In 1522, Luther left his retreat to guide the movement again 
in person and to restrain it from going further than he liked. 
Changes in religion, he urged, should be made only by the gov¬ 
ernments, not by the people : and he preserved all that he could 
of the old church services and organization, establishing them 
on essentially the basis on which they still stand in the Lutheran 
chuTch. By 1530, that church had won North Germany. 

Meantime the revolt against the old church had led to the 
growth of some extreme sects of wild fanatics; and in 1525 
there had been a great rising of the peasants, demanding, “in 
the name of God’s justice,” the abolition of serfdom and the 
right of each parish to choose its own pastor. The peasants 
in Germany were in a much more deplorable condition than in 
England, and, when they found arms in their hands, in several 
places they avenged centuries of cruel oppression by massacres 
of old masters. 

Luther, fearing discredit for his new church, called furiously 
on the princes to put down this rising with the sword — to 
“smite, strangle, or stab” ; and the movement was stamped out 
brutally in blood, with ghastly scenes that infinitely surpassed 
in horror any excesses by the ignorant peasants themselves. 
The whole peasant class was crushed down to a level far 
lower than before, — lower than anywhere else in Europe, — 
where they were to remain helpless for almost three hundred 
years. 

In 1529 another Diet reaffirmed the decree of Worms. 
Against this condemnation the Lutherans presented a formal 
protest — which gave them the name Protestant. Charles V, 
the young emperor, was a zealous churchman, and if his hands 
had been free, he would have crushed Lutheranism at its birth. 
But even while the Diet of Worms was condemning Luther, 
the Spanish towns were rising in revolt and Francis I of France 
was seizing Italian territory (p. 320), and very soon Solyman the 
Magnificent (the Turkish Sultan) invaded Austria. Charles 
promptly crushed the ancient liberties of the Spanish towns; 
but the wars against France and the Turk, with only brief 
truces, filled the next twenty-three years (1521-1544). 


Lutheran¬ 
ism wins the 
North Ger¬ 
man princes 


The peasant 
rising in 


1525 


Luther 
preaches a 
war against 
the peasants 


Foreign 
wars keep 
Charles V 
from acting 




334 


THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 


Abdication 
of Charles 


Zwingli and 
Luther 


Rise of 
Switzerland 


When Charles did find his hands free for Germany, Prot¬ 
estantism was too strong even for his power, and he was forced 
to accept the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which left each prince 
of the Empire free to choose the religion for his province. (The 
people were expected docilely to accept the religion of their 
ruler.) 

The Protestants in their danger had sought aid from the 
French king; and France for her reward had seized some Ger¬ 
man districts, including the city of Metz. Chagrined at the 
loss, and disheartened by the split within the Empire, Charles 
abdicated his many crowns in 1556. His brother Ferdinand 
became ruler of Austria, and soon after was chosen Emperor. 
Charles’ son, Philip II, received the Netherlands, Spain, Naples, 
and Spanish America. There were now two Hapsburg Houses, 
one in Spain, one in Austria. France feared that she might he 
crushed between them, and became eager to take advantage of 
any chance to weaken them. 

II. CALVINISM —IN SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE 

While Lutheranism was winning North Germany (and Scan¬ 
dinavia), another form of Protestantism, Calvinism, was growing 
up in Switzerland and, for a time, in France and even in the 
west of Germany. 

This movement was started in 1519 (the year before Luther 
burned the papal bull), by Zwingli, a priest at Zurich, in Swit¬ 
zerland. Zwingli was far more radical than Luther. Luther 
tried to keep everything of the old worship and doctrine that he 
did not think forbidden by the Bible. But Zwingli refused to 
keep anything of the old that he did not think absolutely commanded 
by the Bible. He also organized a strict system of church disci¬ 
pline which severely punished gaming, swearing, drunkenness, 
and some innocent sports. Before continuing this story, how¬ 
ever, it is best to learn a little about Swiss history. 

The sturdy peasantry of the Swiss mountains preserved 
much of the ancient Teutonic independence and democracy 
even in the feudal age, though their districts had fallen under 



PLATE LVI 



Charles V at the Battle of Mtjhlberg, — a painting by the con¬ 
temporary Venetian artist Titian. This painting (now in Madrid) pic¬ 
tures the Emperor at the summit of his power, in 1547, — and just before 
the collapse. Shortly before, he had forced the French king to sue for 
peace, and had won a truce from the Turk. In the battle of Muhlberg 
(aided by the defection of Maurice of Saxony from the Protestant 
princes) he for the moment crushed Protestantism in Germany. But 
Maurice again changed sides; the Protestants rallied; and a few months 
later Charles fled from Germany, barely escaping capture. 





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CALVINISM 


335 


the control (more or less strict) of neighboring nobles. Some 
small “cantons” in the German Alps belonged to the Hapsburg 
Counts. When Rudolph of Hapsburg (p. 315) became duke 
of distant Austria, he left these former possessions to subor¬ 
dinate officials — who oppressed the people. Accordingly, 
in 1294 three “forest cantons” — Uri, Schwyz, and Unter- 
walden — united in a “perpetual league” for mutual defense. 
For two centuries, from time to time, the Hapsburgs sent armies 
against this union; and soon the league against oppression 
by the lord’s agents became a league for full independence. 
Freedom was finally established by two great victories, —■ 
Morgarten (1315) and Sempach (1386) — to which belong 
the legends of William Tell and of Winkelried. 

Meantime, other neighboring districts had rebelled against 
feudal overlords and joined the league; and some of these new 
members were city-states — Bern, Zurich, and Luzern, richer 
and more aristocratic than the original cantons of farmer folk. 
The union remained a loose confederacy (mainly to manage 
foreign wars). The cantons sometimes quarreled among them¬ 
selves — as over this matter of the Reformation. (Indeed 
Zwingli fell in 1531 in a battle between Zurich and the original 
three cantons, which had remained Catholic.) But there was 
no powerful central government to stamp out the new movement. 

Now Geneva, a French town in the Alps, quarreled with its 
feudal lord, and, for its greater safety, joined the Swiss league. 
Its former lord had been a Catholic bishop; and so Geneva 
welcomed the new doctrines of Zwingli. Five years after the 
death of that leader, John Calvin (a fugitive from France 
because of religious heresy) found refuge at Geneva, and soon 
became there an absolute dictator over both church and gov¬ 
ernment. Geneva became a Puritan “theocracy,” “with 
Calvin for its pope.” 

This remarkable man was a young French scholar of sternly 
logical mind. He became the father of Puritan theology and 
of the Presbyterian church, with its synods and presbyteries. 
Undoubtedly he took the law of Moses rather than the spirit 
of Christ for the basis of his legislation: but his writings in- 


John Calvin 
at Geneva 


Calvinism 
in Scotland, 
England, 
and America 





336 


THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 


The 

“ Counter- 
Reforma¬ 
tion ” 



fluenced profoundly his own and future times. Ardent re¬ 
formers from all Europe flocked to Geneva to imbibe his teach¬ 
ings, and then returned to spread Calvinism in their own lands. 
From Geneva came the seeds of Scotch Presbyterianism, of the 

great Puritan movement 
within the English church 
(soon to be treated), of 
the leading Protestant move¬ 
ment among the Dutch, and 
of the Huguenot church of 
France. It is from the 
French Calvin, not the 
German Luther, that mod¬ 
ern liberal Protestantism 
has sprung. True, Calvin 
did not believe in democ¬ 
racy, and he taught that 
for “subjects” to resist 
even a wicked ruler was 
“to resist God;” but, in 

A Village Maypole Festival of the spite of this teaching, in 
sixteenth century, such as Calvin # 

condemned. the course of historical 

movements, Calvinism became the ally of political freedom in 
Holland, England, and America. 


III. CATHOLICISM KEEPS THE SOUTH OF EUROPE 


For a time, Protestantism promised to win also the south of 
Europe; but Spain, Italy, France, Bohemia, and South Germany 
were finally saved to Catholicism. 

This was mainly because the old church quickly purged itself 
of old abuses. At first Erasmus and other Humanists had been 
interested in the work of Luther. But when it became plain 
that that movement was breaking up the unity of Christendom, 
they were violently repelled by it. Disruption into warring 
sects, they felt, was a greater evil than existing faults. They 
continued to work, however, with even greater zeal than before, 
for reform within the church. Such reform was finally carried 












AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 


337 


out by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). That great body 
did not change Catholic forms; but it defined some doctrines 
more exactly, and infused a greater moral energy into the church. 

The new religious enthusiasm within the Catholic world gave 
birth, also, to several new religious orders. The most im¬ 
portant of these was the “Order of Jesus” (Jesuits), founded 
in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola , a gallant Spanish gentleman of deep 
religious feeling. The Jesuits stood to the friars somewhat as 
the friars stood to the older monks. Holding fast like the 
friars to an intensely religious private life, they represented a 
further advance into the world of public aff airs. Their members 
mingled with men in all capacities. Especially did they dis¬ 
tinguish themselves as statesmen and as teachers. Their schools 
were the best in Europe, and many a Protestant youth was 
drawn back by them to Catholicism; and their many de¬ 
voted missionaries among the heathen in the New World 
won vast regions to Christianity and Catholicism. 

Unhappily less praiseworthy forces had a share in the victory 
of Catholicism. Religious wars, we shall see (p. 348 ff.), in 
large part kept France, Bohemia, and South Germany Catholic ; 
and elsewhere the final success of the Catholic church in crush¬ 
ing out Protestantism was due in part to the Inquisition. 

The Inquisition dated hack to the twelfth century. At that 
time the church had suffered one of its periods of decline; and 
discontent with its corruption had given rise to several small 
heresies. The most important of these sects were the Albigenses 
in southeastern France. They rejected some church doctrines, 
and they rebelled against church government by pope and 
priesthood — so that an old by-word, “I had rather be a Jew,” 
became, for them, “I had rather be a priest” ! 

The church had made many vain attempts to reclaim these 
heretics, and finally, the great reforming pope, Innocent III, pro¬ 
claimed a “holy war” against them, declaring them “more 
wicked than Saracens.” The feudal nobles of northern France 
rallied gladly to this war, hungry for the rich plunder of the 
more civilized south; and a twenty years’ struggle, marked by 
ferocious massacres, crushed the heretics. When open re- 


The Jesuits 


The 

Inquisition 


Origin three 

centuries 

earlier 


338 


THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 


The Spanish 
Inquisition 
and Prot¬ 
estantism 


sistance ceased in desolated Languedoc, the pope set up a special 
court to hunt out and exterminate any secret heretics remaining 
there. Soon afterward, this court, enlarged and reorganized, 
became a regular part of the government of the church for sup¬ 
pressing heresy. In this final form it is commonly known as 
the Spanish Inquisition, though it held sway also in Portugal 
and Italy. 

In the south of Europe, now, the Inquisition became one 
means of stifling the new Protestant heresies. The court sel¬ 
dom confronted the accused with his accuser, or allowed him 
witnesses of his choosing; and it extorted confession by cruel 
tortures, carried to a point where human courage could not 
endure. The property of the convicted went to enrich the 
church, and the heretic himself was handed over to the gov¬ 
ernment for death by fire. Persecution of unbelievers was char¬ 
acteristic of the age. It disgraced every sect, Protestant as well 
as Catholic. But no Protestant land possessed a device so 
admirably calculated to accomplish its purpose as the Inqui¬ 
sition. 

For Further Reading. — Beard’s Martin Luther , or (briefer but 
excellent) Lindsay’s Luther and the German Reformation ; Ward’s The 
Counter-Reformation ; Robinson’s Readings in European History, for 
source material. Parkman’s histories, especially Pioneers of New 
France (chs. v and vi) and Jesuits in North America (ch. ii) contain 
interesting accounts of Jesuit missionaries. If available, the scholarly 
Catholic Encyclopedia should be consulted for its articles on “Luther” 
and “Indulgences.” 










CHAPTER XXXVI 


ENGLAND AND THE PROTESTANT MOVEMENT 


In England Henry VIII 1 2 * 4 had shown himself zealous against 
Luther, and had even written a book to controvert Luther’s 
teaching, in return for which the pope had conferred upon him 
the title, “Defender of the Faith.” A little later, however, 
Henry desired a divorce from his wife, the unfortunate Cath¬ 
erine of Aragon, aunt of Charles V (p. 320). Catherine’s 
only child was a girl (Mary), and Henry was anxious for a son. 
More to the point, he wished to marry Anne Boleyn, a lady of 
the court. 

After long negotiation, the pope refused to grant the divorce. 
Thereupon Henry put himself in the place of the pope so far 
as his island was concerned, and secured the divorce from his 
own courts. The clergy and people were then forbidden to 


1 Cf. p. 311. The following table of Tudor rulers shows also the claim of 
the first ruler of the next royal family. (Three of Henry VIII’s wives, by 
whom he had no children, are not shown.) 


Margaret 

(m. James IV of Scotland) 


(1) Henry VII (1485-1509) 

I 

i “1 

(2) Henry VIII (1509-1547) Mary 

(grandmother of 
Lady Jane Grey) 


James V of Scotland 

I 

Mary Queen of Soots 

I 

(6) James I 
of England 
(1603-1625) 
the first 
Stuart king 


1 - 

(4) Mary 
(1553-1558) 
(daughter of 
Catherine 
of Aragon) 


(5) Elizabeth 
(1558-1603) 
(daughter of 
Anne Boleyn) 


(3) Edward VI 
(1547-1553) 
(son of 

Jane Seymour) 


Henry VIII 
and his 
quarrel with 
the pope 


A Church 
of England 


339 







340 


ENGLAND AND THE REFORMATION 


Dissolution 
of the 

monasteries 


Henry 
burns 
Protestants 
and hangs 
Catholics 


Edward VI, 
1547-1553 


make any further payments to “the Bishop of Rome” (1532), 
and an “Act of Supremacy” declared Henry the “only supreme 
head on earth of the Church of England.” When Parliament 
passed these laws, the Augsburg Confession had just been put 
into form ; and Calvin was about to take up Zwingli’s work. 

Thus in England, separation from Rome was due at first to 
personal motives of the monarch. So far there had been no 
attack on the religious doctrines of the old church; and Henry 
wished none. But his chief advisers, especially Cranmer, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who had pronounced his divorce, 
had strong Protestant leanings; and so some additional 
measures were secured. The doctrine of purgatory was declared 
false; and the Bible, in English, was introduced into the church 
service, in place of the old Latin liturgy. 

Most of England accepted these changes calmly, and even 
the clergy made no serious resistance, as a class, to the over¬ 
throw of the pope’s power; but the monasteries were centers of 
criticism. Henry determined to root out resistance, and to enrich 
himself, by their utter ruin; and, at the king’s wish, Parliament 
dissolved the seven hundred such institutions in England. A 
little of their wealth was set aside to found schools and hospi¬ 
tals (in place of the work in such lines formerly done by the 
monasteries themselves), but Henry seized most of the mo¬ 
nastic lands for the crown. Then he parceled out parts of 
them, shrewdly, to new nobles and the gentry. Thousands 
of influential families were enriched by such gifts, and became 
centers of hostility to any reconciliation with Rome that would 
ruin their private fortunes. 

These changes were as far as Henry would go; and, to the 
close of his long reign, he beheaded “traitors” who recognized 
papal headship, and burned “heretics” who denied papal doc¬ 
trines. In one day, in 1540, three “heretics” and three 
“traitors” suffered death. The most famous martyr was the 
Catholic Sir Thomas More (p. 324). 

Henry was succeeded by his son Edward VI. The new 
king was a boy of nine, and during his short reign the govern¬ 
ment was held by a rapacious clique of Protestant lords. 



MARY TUDOR 


341 



Partly to secure fresh plunder, these men tried to carry England 
into the full current of the Protestant movement. Priests were 
allowed to marry. The use of the old litany, and of incense, 
holy water, and the surplice, was forbidden. Commissioners 
to carry out these 
commands through¬ 
out England some¬ 
times broke the 
staiped glass win¬ 
dows of sacred build¬ 
ings and tore from 
the pedestals the 
carved forms of 
saints. Rebellion 
was put down cru¬ 
elly, several Catho¬ 
lics were burned as 
heretics and con¬ 
spirators, — among 
them Father Forest, 
who was roasted 
barbarously in a 
swinging iron cradle 
over a slow fire. 

During this period, the English Prayer Book was put into its 
present form, under the direction of Cranmer (p. 340); and 
articles of faith were adopted which inclined toward Calvinistic 
doctrine. 

Henry had had Parliament fix the order in which his children 
should be entitled to succeed him ; and so when Edward died 
at fifteen, the throne passed to his elder half-sister, Mary, 
daughter of Catherine of Aragon. Mary was an earnest 
Catholic, and felt an intense personal repugnance for the Prot¬ 
estant movement which had begun in England by the disgrace 
of her mother. The nation was still overwhelmingly Catholic 
in feeling. The Protestants were active, organized, and in¬ 
fluential; but they were few in numbers, and Mary had no 


Sir Thomas More. — After Rubens’ copy of 
Holbein’s portrait. 


Queen 
Mary tries 
to restore 
Catholicism, 
1553-1558 






342 


ENGLAND AND THE REFORMATION 


Mary’s 

persecutions 


Mary’s un¬ 
popularity 


difficulty in doing away with the Protestant innovations of 
her brother’s time. But she icanted more than this : she wished 
to undo her father’s work, and to restore England to its allegiance 
to the pope. Parliament readily voted the repeal of all anti- 
Catholic laws, but it refused stubbornly to restore the church 
lands. Finally the pope wisely waived this point. Then the 
nation was solemnly absolved, and received back into the 
Roman church. 

But Mary destroyed her work hy marrying Philip of Spain, 
son of the Emperor Charles V, and hy a bloody persecution of 
Protestants. All English patriots dreaded, with much reason, 
lest little England be made a mere province of the world-wide 
Spanish rule; and even zealous Catholics shuddered at the 
thought of the Spanish Inquisition, looming up behind the 
Queen’s hated Spanish bridegroom. 

Mary’s persecution in itself was quite enough to rouse popu¬ 
lar fear and hatred. In a few months, more than two hundred 
and seventy martyrs were burned, — nearly half the entire 
number that suffered death for conscience’ sake (avowedly) in 
all English history. Catholics had died for their faith under 
both Henry and Edward; but there had been no such piling up 
of executions; and, moreover, most of those Catholic victims 
had been put to death, nominally, not for religious opinions, 
but as detested traitors; and the executions (with a very few 
exceptions) had taken place not by fire but by the more familiar 
headsman’s ax. England had taken calmly the persecutions 
by these preceding sovereigns, but it was now deeply stirred. 
The most famous martyrs were Archbishop Cranmer and 
Bishops Ridley and Latimer. Latimer had preached in ap¬ 
proval of the torture of Father Forest; but now he showed 
at least that he too knew how to die a hero. “Play the man, 
Master Ridley,” he called out to his companion as they ap¬ 
proached the stake; “ we shall this day, by God’s grace, light 
such a candle in England as, I trust, shall never be put out.” 

Other causes, too, made the Queen unpopular. To please 
her husband, she led England into a silly and disastrous war 
with France, and then managed it blunderingly. England had 




PLATE LVII 




Above. — Tintern Abbey To-day. (The road is modern.) 

Below. — Tewksbury Abbey To-day : one of the very few such struc¬ 


tures to escape ruin. 














PLATE LVIII 




Above. — Ruins of Kenilworth Castle To-day. 


Below. — Kenilworth in 1620, from a fresco painting of that year. 
Queen Elizabeth gave this castle to her favorite, the Earl of Leicester, 
who entertained the Queen there with a splendid pageant described in 
Scott’s Kenilworth. The walls enclosed seven acres. 

















QUEEN ELIZABETH 


343 


never seemed more contemptible to other nations; and ap¬ 
parently, it was doomed to become the prey of Spain or France. 
Mary died after a troubled reign of five years. As Henry’s 
parliaments had arranged, she was succeeded by her half-sister, 
Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. 
From her father, she had a strong body, a powerful intellect, an 
imperious will, and dauntless courage; and from both parents, 
a sort of bold beauty and a strain of coarseness. She had grown 
up in Henry’s court among the men of the New Learning, and 
was probably the best educated woman of her century, —• 
speaking several languages and reading both Latin and Greek. 
She has been called “a true child of the Renaissance,” too, fn 
her freedom from moral scruple. To Elizabeth, says a great 
historian, “a lie was simply an intellectual means of avoiding 
a difficulty.” 

She was often vacillating in policy; but she was a keen judge 
of men, and had the good sense to keep about her a group of 
wise and patriotic counselors. Above all, she had a deep love 
for her country. After more than forty years of rule, she said 
proudly, and, on the whole, truly, — “ I do call God to witness, 
never thought was cherished in my heart that tended not to 
my subjects’ good.” 

And England repaid her love with a passionate and romantic 
devotion to its “Virgin Queen.” Except for her counselors, 
men knew little of Elizabeth’s deceit and vulgarity and weak¬ 
nesses. They saw only that her long reign had piloted England 
safely through a maze of foreign perils, and had built up its 
power and dignity abroad and its unity and prosperity at home, 
while her court was made glorious by splendid bands of states¬ 
men, warriors, and poets. Except for the “Oxford Reformers” 
(p. 323), England had lagged behind in the early Renaissance, 
but now the Elizabethan Renaissance gave that land a first place 
in the movement. Edmund Spenser created a new form of 
English poetry in his Faerie Queene. And the splendor of the 
Elizabethan age found a climax in English drama, with Shah- 
spere as the most resplendent star in a glorious galaxy that 


Queen 

Elizabeth, 

1558-1603 


The 

Elizabethan 

Renaissance 





The “ Eliza¬ 
bethan 
Settlement ” 


344 ENGLAND AND THE REFORMATION 

counted such other shining names as Marlowe, Greene, Beaumont, 
Fletcher, and Ben Jonson. Not less splendid, possibly even 
more important, was the scientific progress of Harvey and 



Shakspere’s .Theater, The Globe. — This structure was built in 1599, 
and was burned in 1613 from a fire caused by discharge of “cannon” in 
a presentation of the play of Henry VIII. 

Francis Bacon (p. 358). Amid the petty squabbles of suc¬ 
ceeding reigns, England looked back with longing to “the 
spacious days of great Elizabeth.” 

When Elizabeth came to the throne, at least two thirds of England 
was still Catholic in doctrine. Elizabeth herself had no liking 
for Protestantism, while she did like the pomp and ceremonial 
of the old church. She wanted neither the system of her sister 
nor that of her brother, but would have preferred to go back 
to that of her father. But the extreme Catholic party did not 
recognize her mother’s marriage as valid, and so denied Eliza¬ 
beth’s claim to the throne. This forced her to throw herself 
into the hands of the Protestants. She gave all chief offices in 
church and state to that active, intelligent, well-organized mi¬ 
nority ; and the “Elizabethan Settlement” established the Eng¬ 
lish Episcopal church much as it still stands. At about the 












QUEEN ELIZABETH 


345 


same time, John Knox brought Calvinism from Geneva to Scot¬ 
land, and organized the Scotch Presbyterian church. 

Early in Elizabeth’s reign, an “Act of Uniformity” had 
ordered all people to attend the Protestant worship, under 
threat of extreme penalties; but for many years this act was 



Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury, — exhorting the land forces gathered there 
to resist a Spanish landing. The rallying of the Catholic gentry to this 
gathering, with their retainers, insured England’s safety, ev.en if the Ar¬ 
mada had not been destroyed at sea. 

not enforced strictly. After Catholic plots against her throne 
began, however, Elizabeth adopted strong measures. Many 
leading Catholics were fined and imprisoned for refusing to 
attend the English church. And, under a new law, Catholic 
priests, and others who made converts from Protestantism to 
Catholicism, were declared guilty of treason. Many martyrs 
suffered torture on the rack and death on the scaffold — nearly 
as many as had died in the persecution of “ Bloody Mary ”; 


The Act of 
Uniformity 


Persecution 
of Catholic 
“ traitors ” 












346 


ENGLAND AND THE REFORMATION 


The 

Spanish 

Armada, 

1588 


England 

becomes 

Protestant 


Ireland 

remains 

Catholic 


but Elizabeth, like her brother, succeeded in making such exe¬ 
cutions appear punishment of traitors. 

England was constantly threatened by the two great powers 
of Europe, Catholic France and Spain. Neither, however, was 
willing to see the-other gain England ; and by skillfully playing 
off one against the other, Elizabeth kept peace for many years 
and gained time for England to grow strong. Gradually it 
became more and more clear that the real foe was Spain. Then 
Elizabeth secretly gave aid to the Dutch, who were in rebellion 
against Philip II of Spain (p. 348); and finally Philip launched 
his “Invincible Armada” for the conquest of England (1588). 
English ships of all sorts — mostly little merchant vessels 
hastily transformed into a war navy — gathered in the Channel; 
and, to the amazement of the world, the small but swift and 
better handled English vessels completely outfought the great 
Spanish navy in a splendid nine days’ sea fight. Spain nevei 
recovered her supremacy on the sea, — and the way was prepared 
for the English colonization of America. 

To the chagrin of Spanish king and Roman pope, the mass of 
English Catholics had proved more English than papal, and 
had rallied gallantly to the Queen; and, for young Englishmen, 
the splendid struggle made Protestantism and patriotism seem 
much the same thing. The rising generation became largely 
Protestant; and before Elizabeth’s death, even the Puritan 
doctrines from Geneva and from Presbyterian Scotland had 
begun to spread widely among the people. 

Ireland, the third part of the British Isles, remained Catholic. 
Henry II (p. 285) had tried to conquer Ireland; but, until the 
time of the Tudors, the English really held only a little strip 
of land (“the English Pale”) near Dublin. The rest of Ireland 
remained in the hands of native chieftains; but constant war 
rooted out the old beginnings of Irish culture. 

Henry VIII established English authority over most of the 
island and destroyed the monasteries, the chief remaining 
centers of industry and learning. Shortly before the Armada, 
Spain made attempts to use the island as a base from which 




IRELAND 


347 


to attack England. Alarmed to frenzy by this deadly peril 
at their back door, Elizabeth’s generals then completed the 
military subjugation with atrocious cruelties. Tens of thou¬ 
sands of men, women, and children were killed, or perished of 
famine in the Irish bogs; and great districts of the country 
were given to English nobles and gentry. Incessant feuds 
continued between the peasantry and these absentee landlords, 
and the Irish nation looked on the attempt to introduce the 
Church of England as a part of the hated English tyranny. 
As English patriotism became identified with Protestantism, 
so, even more completely, Irish patriotism became identified 
with Catholicism. 

For Further Reading. — Green’s History of the English People is 
the best general account. 






CHAPTER XXXVII 
A CENTURY OF RELIGIOUS WARS 


Philip II 
of Spain 


The Dutch 
Rebellion 


Alva’s 
Council of 
Blood 


When Philip II succeeded his father (p. 334) as king of Spain 
and of the Sicilies, and master of the Netherlands, he was the 
most powerful and most absolute monarch in Europe. The 
Spanish infantry were the finest soldiery in the world. The 
Spanish navy was the unquestioned mistress of the ocean. 
Each year the great “gold fleet” filled Philip’s coffers from 
the exhaustless wealth of the Americas. In 1580 the ruling 
family in Portugal died out, and that throne (with Portugal’s 
East India empire) was seized by Philip. 1 The Spanish boast 
that the sun never set upon Spanish dominions became literal 
fact. 

Philip himself was a plodding, cautious toiler — despotic, 
cruel, unscrupulous. Charles V had disregarded the old liberties 
of the Netherlands and had set up the Inquisition in that coun¬ 
try with frightful consequences. Philip continued his father’s 
abuses, without possessing any of his redeeming qualities in 
Dutch eyes. He was a foreign master — not a Hollander by 
birth as Charles had been — and he ruled from a distance 
and through Spanish officers. Finally, Protestant and Cath¬ 
olic nobles joined in demands for reform and especially that 
they might be ruled by officers from their own people. Philip’s 
reply was to send the stern Spanish general, Alva, with a veteran 
army, to enforce submission. Alva’s Council of Blood declared 
almost the whole population guilty of rebellion, and deserving 
of death with confiscation of goods. This atrocious sentence 
was enforced by butchery of great numbers — especially of the 
wealthy classes — and in 1568 a revolt began. 

The struggle between the little disunited provinces and the huge 
world-empire lasted forty years. In the beginning the conflict 
1 Portugal reestablished her independence, by revolt, in 1640. 

348 




THE DUTCH REBELLION 


349 



was for political liberty, but it soon became also a religious 
struggle. It was waged with an exasperated and relentless fury 
that made it a byword for ferocity even in that brutal age. City 
after city was given up to indiscriminate rapine and massacre, 
with deeds of horror indescribable. Over against this dark 


Francis Drake Knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the deck of his 
ship, the Golden Hind, at his return from raiding Spanish America in his 
voyage round the globe (1581). — From a contemporary drawing by Sir 
John Gilbert. Expeditions of this kind were one way in which English¬ 
men showed their sympathy for Holland while England was still nom¬ 
inally neutral. Of course they had much to do with provoking Spain to 
the attack by the Armada. * 

side stands the stubborn heroism of the Dutch people, who saved 
not themselves only, but also the cause of Protestantism and 
of political liberty for the world. 

William, Prince of Orange, was the central hero of the conflict. 
Because he foiled his enemies so often by wisely keeping his plans 
to himself, he is known as William the Silent; and his persistency 
and statesmanship have fitly earned him the name “ the Dutch 
Washington.” Again and again, he seemed to be crushed; but 
from each defeat he snatched a new chance for victory. 


William of 
Orange 









350 


RELIGIOUS WARS 


The Relief 
of Leyden, 
1574 


England 
aids Holland 


Dutch Inde¬ 
pendence 


Holland’s 

splendid 

period 


The turning point of the war was the relief of Leyden. For many 
months the city had been closely besieged. The people had 
devoured the cats and rats and were dying grimly of starvation. 
Once they murmured, but the heroic burgomaster (mayor) 
shamed them, declaring they might have his body to eat, but 
while he lived they should never surrender to the Spanish 
butchers. All attempts to relieve the perishing town had failed. 
But fifteen miles away, on the North Sea, rode a Dutch fleet 
with supplies. Then William the Silent cut the dikes and let 
in the ocean on the land. Over wide districts the prosperity 
of years was engulfed in ruin; but the waves swept also over 
the Spanish camp, and upon the invading sea the relieving ships 
rode to the city gates. Dutch liberty was saved. 

Holland had been fighting England’s battle as well as her 
own : only the Dutch war had kept Philip from attacking Eng¬ 
land. Englishmen knew this; and, for years, hundreds of 
English volunteers had been flocking to join the Dutch army. 
Elizabeth herself had many times helped the Dutch by secret 
supplies of money, and now in 1585 she sent a small English 
army to their aid. This was the immediate signal for the 
Spanish Armada; and the overthrow of Spain’s naval suprem¬ 
acy by the splendid English sea dogs (p. 346) added tremen¬ 
dously to Holland’s chances. True, the ten southern provinces 
of the old Netherlands finally gave up the struggle, and returned 
to Spanish allegiance. (They were largely French in race and 
Catholic in religion. Protestantism was now completely 
stamped out in them. After this time, they are known as the 
Spanish Netherlands, and finally as modern Belgium.) But the 
seven northern provinces — Dutch in blood and Protestant 
in religion — maintained the conflict, and won their independ¬ 
ence as The United Provinces, or the Dutch Republic. 1 

The most marvelous feature of the struggle between the little 
Dutch state and Spain was that Holland grew wealthy during 
the contest, although the stage of the desolating war. The 


1 The government consisted of a representative “States General” and a 
“Stadtholder” (President). The most important of the seven provinces 
was Holland, by whose name the union was often known. 



THE NETHERLANDS 

at the Truce of 1609 


SCALE OF MILES 


The Seven United Provinces 

The Provinces still Retained by Spain t ; 


C 'EAST 
FRIESLAND 

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THE DUTCH REPUBLIC 


351 


Dutch drew their riches not from the wasted land, but from the 
sea; and during the war they plundered the possessions of Spain 
in the East Indies. The little republic built up a vast colonial 
empire; and, especially after Spain’s naval supremacy had been 
engulfed with the Armada, the Dutch held almost a monopoly 








Dutch Windmills (near Molen). — In the sixteenth century, as now, such 
windmills in great numbers were used to pump surplus water out of the 
canals back into the ocean. They are a characteristic feature of that 
country “where the hulls of ships at anchor on the sea are higher than 
the steeples of the churches.” 


of the Asiatic trade for all Europe. One hundred thousand of 
their three million people lived constantly upon the sea. Suc¬ 
cess in so heroic a war stimulated the people to a wonderful 
activity. Holland taught all Europe scientific agriculture 
and horticulture, as well as the science of navigation, and in 
the seventeenth century her presses put forth more books than 
all the rest of Europe. 

On the other hand, Spain sank rapidly into a second-rate Spain’s 
power. The bigot, Philip III, drove into exile the Christianized decay 
Moors, the descendants of those Mohammedans left behind 
when the Moorish political power had been driven out. They 





352 


RELIGIOUS WARS, 1546-1648 


numbered perhaps a twentieth of the entire population, — and 
they were the foremost agriculturists and almost the sole 
skilled artisans and manufacturers. Their pitiless expulsion 
inflicted a deadly blow upon the prosperity of Spain. For a 
time the wealth she drew from America concealed her fall. But 
after the Armada she never played a great part in Europe, and, 
living on the 'plunder of the New World, she failed to develop the 
industrial life which alone could furnish a true prosperity. 
Moreover, the Inquisition steadily “ sifted out the most flexible 
minds and the stoutest hearts,” until a once virile race sank 
into apathy and decay. 


Religious 
war in 
France, 
1562-1598 


Henry IV 


Edict of 
Nantes 


Another religious struggle (1562-1598) long desolated France 
— between the Huguenots (the French Calvinists) and their 
persecutors. This strife was complicated by personal rivalries 
between groups of great lords, and, even worse than the other 
wars of the period, it was marked by assassinations and treach¬ 
eries — the most horrible of which was the famous Massacre 
of St. Bartholomew’s Bay (August 24, 1572) in which 10,000 
Huguenots perished. 

Their leader, however, young Henry of Navarre, escaped, 
and, on the death of the childless French king in 1589, he be¬ 
came heir to the throne. Philip of Spain, to prevent his accession, 
gave aid to the Catholic lords; but now Philip met the third of 
the great leaders on whom his schemes went to wreck. Henry 
drove the Spanish army in shameful rout from France in the 
dashing cavalry battle of Ivry. Then, to secure Paris, which he 
had long besieged (and to give peace to his distracted country), 
he accepted Catholicism, declaring lightly that “ so fair a city ” 
was “ well worth a mass.” 

In 1598 Henry’s Edict of Nantes established toleration for the Hu¬ 
guenots. (1) They were granted full equality before the law. 
(Before this, the forms of oaths required in law courts had been 
such as a Protestant could not take, and therefore a Huguenot 
could not sue to recover property.) (2) They were to have per¬ 
fect liberty of conscience in private, and to enjoy the privilege of 
public worship except in the cathedral cities. And (3) certain 



Henry IV,—-visited unexpectedly by the stately Spanish ambassador. “Is your business pressing?” asked 
the king. “No ; well, then, we will first finish our game.” A modern painting by Jean Ingres. 















PLATE LX 



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THE HUGUENOTS 


353 


towns were handed over to them, to hold with their own gar¬ 
risons, as security for their rights. 

Henry IV proved one of the greatest of French kings, and he 
was one of the most loved. With his sagacious minister, the 
Duke of Sully , he set himself to restore prosperity to desolated 
France. Roads and canals were built; new trades were 
fostered; and the industry of the French people once more with 
marvelous rapidity removed the evil results of the long strife. 

Henry’s son, Louis XIII, came to the throne in 1610 as a 
boy of nine. Anarchy again raised its head; but France was 
saved by the commanding genius of Cardinal Richelieu, the chief 
minister of the young king. Richelieu was a sincere patriot, 
and, though an earnest Catholic, his statesmanship was guided 
by political, not by .religious, motives. He crushed the great 
nobles and he waged war upon the Huguenots to deprive them 
of their garrisoned towns, which menaced the unity of France. 
But when he had captured their cities and held the Huguenots 
at his mercy, he kept toward them in full the other pledges of 
the Edict of Nantes. At the same time, he aided the German 
Protestants against the Catholic emperor, in the religious war 
that was going on in Germany, and so secured a chance to seize 
territory from the Empire for France. 

The period of the religious i^Urs in the Netherlands and France 
had been a period of uneasy j)eace in Germany; but now came 
in that land the last of the great religious wars — just a hundred 
years after Luther posted his theses at Wittenberg. 

This Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) arose directly out of 
an attempt of Protestant Bohemia to make itself independent 
of the Catholic Hapsburg Empire. Bohemian independence 
lasted only a few weeks; but this was long enough to call all 
Germany into two &rmed camps. The Protestant German 
princes, however, showed themselves disunited and timid; and, 
had the war been le'ft to Germany, a Catholic victory would 
soon have been assured. But all over Europe sincere and religious 
Protestants felt deeply and truly that the war against the Catholic 
Hapshurgs was their own war —- much as all free peoples felt 


Henry and 
Sully 


Cardinal 

Richelieu 


The Thirty 
Years’ War 
in Germany 




354 


RELIGIOUS WARS, 1546-1648 


Wallenstein 

and 

Gustavus 

Adolphus 


Devastation 
of Germany 


in the World War when liberty was imperiled by Hohenzollern 
autocracy. First Denmark (1625-1629) and then Sweden 
(1630) entered the field in behalf of the Protestant cause; and 
at last (1635-1648), for more selfish reasons, Catholic France un¬ 
der Richelieu threw its weight also against the Hapsburgs who 
so long had ringed France about with hostile arms. 

The war was marked by the careers of four great generals, 
— Tilly and Wallenstein on the imperial side, and Gustavus 
Adolphus, king of Sweden, “ the Lion of the North,” and Mans- 
feld, on the side of the Protestants. Gustavus was at once 
great and admirable; but he fell at the battle of Liitzen (1632) 
in the moment of victory; and thereafter the struggle was as 
dreary as it was terrible. Mansfeld and Wallenstein from the 
first deliberately adopted the policy of making the war pay, by 
supporting their armies everywhere upon the country; but during 
the short career of Gustavus, his blond Swede giants were held 
in admirable discipline, with the nearest approach to a regular 
commissariat that had been known since Roman times. (Gus¬ 
tavus’ success, too, was due largely to new tactics. Muskets, 
fired by a “match” and discharged from a “rest,” had become 
an important portion of every army; but troops were still 
massed in the old fashion that had prevailed when pike- 
men were the chief infantry. Gustavus was the first gen¬ 
eral to adapt the arrangement of his troops to the new 
weapons.) 

The calamities the war brought were monstrous. Season by 
season, for a generation, armies of ruthless freebooters harried 
the land. The peasant found that he toiled only to feed robbers 
and to draw them to outrage and torture his family; so he 
ceased to labor, and became himself robber or camp-follower. 
Half the population and two thirds the movable property of Ger¬ 
many were swept away. In many large districts, the facts were 
worse than this average. In Bohemia, thirty thousand happy 
villages had shrunk to six thousand miserable ones, and the 
rich promise of the great University of Prague was ruined. 
Everywhere populous cities shriveled into hamlets; and for 
miles upon miles, former hamlets were the lairs of wolf packs. 



PLATE LXI 


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victory King Gustavus charged forward too far, and was surrounded by a group of the enemy’s horse. 




















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PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 355 

Not until 1850 did some sections of Germany again contain 
as many homesteads and cattle as in 1618. 

The war was closed by the Peace of Westphalia, — drawn up 
by a congress of ambassadors from nearly every European power. 
This treaty contained three distinct classes of stipulations: 
provisions for religious peace in Germany; territorial rewards 
for France and Sweden ; and provisions to secure the independ¬ 
ence of the German princes against the Empire. 

1. The principle of the Peace of Augsburg was reaffirmed and 
extended. Each sovereign prince in Germany was to choose his 
religion; and his subjects were to have three years to conform 
to his choice or to withdraw from his realm. 1 

2. Sweden, which was already a great Baltic power, extending 
around both the east and west shores of that sea (p. 266), secured 
also much of the south coast (with control over German com¬ 
merce): Pomerania—with the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and 
Weser — was the payment she received for her part in the war. 
France annexed most of Alsace, with some fortresses on the Ger¬ 
man bank of the Rhine. (The Congress also expressly recognized 
the independence of Switzerland and of the Dutch Provinces.) 

3. The Empire lost more than mere territory. The separate 
states were given the right to form alliances with one another 
or even with foreign powers. The imperial Diet became avowedly 
a gathering of ambassadors for discussion, not for govern¬ 
ment : no state was to be bound by decisions there without 
its own consent. 

The religious wars filled a century — from the struggle between 
the German princes and Charles V (1546) to the Peace of West¬ 
phalia (1648). They left the Romance 2 South of Europe Catholic, 
and the Teutonic North Protestant. France emerged, more 
united than ever, quite equal in power to any two states of 

1 Many of the South German Protestants were then driven into exile by 
their Catholic lords. This was the first cause of the coming to America of 
the “Pennsylvania Dutch.” 

2 Romance is a term applied to those European peoples and languages 
closely related to the old Roman rule — like the Italians, Spanish, and 
French. 


Peace of 
Westphalia 


Conditions 
at the close 
of the re¬ 
ligious wars 






356 


RELIGIOUS WARS, 1546-1648 


Europe. England and Sweden had both risen into “ Great 
Powers.” Two new federal republics had been added to the 
European family of nations, — Switzerland and the United 
Provinces; and the second of these was one of the leading 
“Powers.” The danger of a universal Hapsburg empire was 
forever gone. Spain, the property of one Hapsburg branch, 
had sunk to a third-rate power; the Holy Roman Empire, the 
realm of the other branch, was an open sham. Far to the east 
loomed indistinctly a huge and growing Russian state. 

Exercise. — Dates to be added to the list for drill, — 1520, 1588, 
1648. 

For Further Reading. — The Student's Motley is an admirable 
and brief condensation of the American Motley’s great history of the 
Dutch Republic. Willert’s Henry of Navarre is a brilliant story. 

























































































































PAET IX —FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 
TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1648-1789 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 
SCIENCE AND TRADE 

The hundred years of ruinous religious wars and bloody per¬ 
secution, almost without notice at the time, was also an age of 
splendid advance in science and in trade, — changes either of 
which was to modify the life of men and women in the future 
more than the wars of Wallenstein and Gustavus. 

I. SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE 

The true astronomy of Aristarchus (p. 146) had long been 
lost, and all through the Middle Ages men believed the earth 
the center of the universe with sun and stars revolving around 
it. But in 1543 a Polish astronomer, Copernicus, published a 
book proving that the earth was only one member of a solar 
system which had the sun for a center. 

From fear of persecution, Copernicus had kept his discovery 
to himself for many years — until just before his death, when 
the “religious wars” were just beginning. Those wars them¬ 
selves checked study and discovery in parts of Europe; and 
persecution, for a while, repressed scientific discoveries in Cath¬ 
olic countries. At the opening of the Renaissance (p. 315) 
the popes had been the foremost patrons of the new learning; 
but now the reaction against the Protestant revolt had thrown 
control into conservative hands, and the church used its tre¬ 
mendous powers to stifle new scientific discoveries. 

Still much was done. In Elizabeth’s day in England, the 
physician, William Harvey, discovered the truth about the 

357 


Copernicus 
and the so¬ 
lar system 







358 


SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS 


Harvey and 
the circula¬ 
tion of the 
blood 


Galileo 


The 

method of 
experiment 


circulation of the blood, 1 and so made possible modern medicine. 
And in Italy Galileo discovered the laws of falling bodies and 
of the pendulum (as they are now taught in our text-books on 
physics), invented the thermometer, and, taking a hint from 
a Dutch plaything, constructed the first real telescope. With 
this, in 1610, he demonstrated the truth of Copernicus’ teachings 
by showing the “phases” of the planet Venus in its revolution 
about the sun. True, Galileo was summoned to Rome by the 
pope, imprisoned, and forced publicly to recant his teaching 
that the earth moved around the sun; but, as he rose from 
his knees, he is said to have murmured, “ None the less, it does 
move.” 

And more important than any specific discovery about sun 
or the human body was the discovery of a new way of finding 
out truth about the world. For centuries scholars had tried 
to learn only by reading ancient authorities , and perhaps by 
reasoning a little further, in their own minds, upon what these 
authorities taught. But the new discoveries had been made 
in another way; and now, Francis Bacon, in England, set forth 
eloquently the necessity of experiment to discover new facts. 
And before 1700, in Italy, France, and England, great scientific 
societies were founded, to encourage scientific investigation. 


II. “BUSINESS” BECOMES A FORCE IN LIFE 

The second great change that marked this otherwise dismal 
century was the growing influence in human life of what we 
call business. “ Business ” had been almost unknown and wholly 
without influence during the early Middle Ages, and during 
the later centuries of that period it had existed upon a small 
scale only. How the barbarian invasions and the violence of 
the “ Dark Ages” destroyed the old Roman town life in Western 
Europe has been briefly told, and also how after the Crusades 
a new trade began to build towns anew. But for some centuries, 


1 For centuries men had believed that the bright blood of the arteries and 
the dark blood of the veins were two distinct systems (one from the heart, 
the other from the liver). Harvey proved that this was all one system and 
that the dark blood was purified in the lungs. 











Rheinstein, a Medieval Castle on the Rhine. 








HINDRANCES IN MIDDLE AGES 


359 


by our standards, these new towns were few and small, even 
in proportion to the small population of Europe in that day. 

During the Middle Ages there were five special hindrances to 
trade. 

1. The first was the continued violence of the feudal baron, 
who long looked upon the trader as an escaped serf and there¬ 
fore as his natural prey. In England, noble and townsman 
were far less hostile than on the continent; but an event in 
England, as late as the time of Edward I (1300), shows this 
class war even there. The town of Boston was holding a great 
fair. 1 Citizens, of course, guarded its gates zealously against 
any hostile intruders, but an armed band of country gentle¬ 
men (of the “noble” class) got through in the disguise of play 
actors. When darkness fell, they began their horrible work of 
murder and plunder. They fired every booth, slaughtered the 
merchants, and hurried the booty to ships ready at the quay. 
The horror-stricken people of other towns told how streams of 
molten gold mingled with rivers of blood in the gutters. 

True, King Edward, under whose license the fair had been 
promised protection, proved strong enough to hang the leaders 
of these “gentlemen.” But in Germany, at the same period, 
like events followed one another in horrible panorama. The 
towns shut out the “ noble knights ” by walls and guards. But 
from their castle crags the knights swooped down upon unwary 
townsmen who ventured too near, and even upon armed cara¬ 
vans of traders, to rob and murder, or to carry off for ransom. 
Such unhappy captives were loaded with rusty chains that ate 
into the flesh, and were left in damp and filthy dungeons 
so that to “rot a peasant” became a by-word. 2 


Hindrances 
to “ busi¬ 
ness ” in 
the Middle 
Ages: 
feudal 
violence 


1 Large cities, at fixed times, held great fairs, lasting many days, for all 
the small places in the neighboring regions, — since the villages and small 
towns had either no shops or small ones with few goods. Merchants from 
all the kingdom — and, indeed, sometimes from all Europe, journeyed to 
such fairs with their goods, to reap a harvest from the country folk who 
crowded about their booths. The town took toll for these booths, and usu¬ 
ally itself paid king or noble a license fee for security. 

2 At sea the trader’s perils were even greater. There were as yet no light¬ 
houses and no charts to mark dangerous reefs, and the waters swarmed with 
pirates, led often by some neighboring noble. 




360 


PROGRESS OF TRADE 


Tolls 


Lack of 
money 



2. Gradually, the robber barons learned that it did not pay 
to kill the goose that laid golden eggs, and the land pirates 
softened their methods. The new monarchies, too, put an end 
to feudal violence. But the trader, though no longer likely to 
be robbed of all his goods at one time, was still compelled to 
surrender parts of them repeatedly in tolls at every bridge or 


Ruins of a Rhine Castle, above a modern town. 

ferry or ford, at the gate of every town, at the foot of every castle 
hill by which the rough pack-horse trail wound its way. The 
collection of such tolls, too, was marked often by all sorts of 
vexatious delays and by intentional injury to the remaining 
goods, unless the helpless trader bribed the official who did the 
work with added goods or coin for his private use. (Such tolls 
grew up by custom, imposed by local authorities. They had no 
sanction from any central or national government; but neither 
did the governments materially interfere to abolish them un¬ 
til toward 1700. In England this evil never reached such serious 
proportions as on the continent.) 

3. And when the patient trader had carried his diminished 
wares past all these perils to people who wished to buy, too 






DURING THE RENAISSANCE 


361 


often the would-be customers had no money. Wealth they 
had, perhaps, in land or in goods, but not in any portable form 
that the trader could afford to take in pay. This lack of money 
was for centuries (pp. 235, 272) a serious hindrance. In Europe 
the ancient mines of gold and silver were exhausted, and there 
was no supply of precious metals from which to coin enough 
money for the demands of trade. 

4. A large part of what little money there was remained in Idle money, 
hiding, buried perhaps in the earth for safe keeping. The man usury ” 
who had coin, but who did not need to use it himself, had no 
inducement, as now, to lend it to some one who did want to 
use it. Interest (“ usury ”) was unlawful. The whole Christian 
world believed that God forbade man to take pay for the use 
of money. Therefore the Jews (outside this Christian faith) 
were the only money-lenders of the Middle Ages until almost 
the close; and they, robbed at every turn themselves by king 
and baron, loaned only at ruinous rates rising usually to about 
fifty per cent a year. 1 

To be sure, in the thirteenth century Italian money-lenders 
( Lombards ) began in a small degree to supply the place of modern 
bank loans by a quaint evasion of the belief about usury. They 
established moneyed colonies in the chief towns of Europe, 2 and 
loaned money on good security without interest for a short time 
(a week or a month, perhaps); but, when not repaid on time, 
they then exacted a heavy penalty, previously agreed upon, 
for each month’s delay. The Christian world found it con¬ 
venient to accept this subterfuge, but it was still some centuries 
before the old beliefs and laws against usury were openly aban¬ 
doned. 

1 The Christian world in the most un-Christian spirit despised and per¬ 
secuted the whole Jewish race on the ground that some of their distant an¬ 
cestors had persecuted Jesus. In every Western European land, a Jew was 
compelled by law to wear a special cap or other clothing to mark his race, 
and to live in a special quarter of the towns in which he was permitted to 
live at all (the Ghetto). He was forbidden to own land or to enter any 
trade gild, and so was forced to live by lending money — which increased 
the popular hatred and led to many massacres in England and France like 
those which the Jews have had to suffer in recent years in Russia and Po¬ 
land. 

2 “ Lombard Street” in London has remained a great money center. 






362 


PROGRESS OF TRADE 


Crude 

banking 

methods 


Gild 

restrictions 


In some other respects, too, the Lombards revived for Western 
Europe the elementary banking system of the old Roman Empire 
(see Ancient World), which had never died entirely in Italy and 
the Greek Empire. A merchant in Boulogne might come to 
owe a London merchant a large sum. To carry the coin from one 
city to another for each transaction grew more and more impos¬ 
sible as business grew. But now the Boulogne merchant merely 
paid the amount into the Lombard “ bank” in his city (plus some 
“premium” for the bank’s service) and received a written 
“order” for the money on a London Lombard house. This 
written “bill of exchange” would then be sent to the London 
creditor, who could get his money on presenting it at his London 
“bank.” The London bank would have frequent occasion, 
in like fashion, to sell drafts upon the Boulogne bank. Then 
at some convenient time the two banking houses would settle 
their balance in coin; but the amount to be carried from one to 
the other would be small, compared to the total amount of bus¬ 
iness it represented. This practice was a tremendous help to 
business — far short as it fell of our complicated “credit” 
systems by which we make one dollar do the work of many dol¬ 
lars. 

5. And finally the gild rules absolutely prevented what we 
call “wholesale” business in most towns. Those rules (for a 
“just price” and to prevent monopoly) had been highly bene¬ 
ficial when they were adopted, but now they were hindrances 
to the new methods called for by the conditions of the new day. 


A summary 
of the 
growth of 
trade to 
1500 A.D. 


In spite of all such obstacles trade had grown slowly from the 
Crusades to Columbus. Even in the Dark Ages, Venice arSd 
Genoa and a few other Italian cities had kept some of their an¬ 
cient trade with the Orient — by fleets of ships that met the 
Arabian caravans on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean; 
and after the Crusades this trade spread west from Italy down 
the Rhine through Germany and France and the Netherlands, 
and thence across the Channel to England, and, through the 
Hansa merchants, even to the Baltic lands. This trade, too, had 
made life over in Western Europe, not merely by bringing in new 


AFTER COLUMBUS 


363 


luxuries and comforts, but much more by stirring men up to 
new activities and by awakening new energies. The isolation 
of the old manor and village life vanished, and its dull apathy 
went with it. To satisfy desires for the new foreign products, 
the people of the village must themselves produce more than 
before, and usually something different from before, in order 
to have wherewith to buy. So new manufactures were built 
up; and soon, in many places, the men of the West began to 
manufacture for themselves the coveted glassware and silks 
and velvets and fine linens which at first had come only through 
rare traders. Thus, for the more energetic and stronger of the 
town people, life became more hopeful and more strenuous , as well 
as vastly more comfortable. 

Most of these commodities, however, were still supplied by trade 
with the East; and some things, like sugar, drugs, and spices, 
could be secured in no other way. How the old routes for 
this trade were closed one by one in the fifteenth century, 
and how the demand for new trade routes played a part in the 
raising of the curtain upon new worlds, east and west, has been 
told. And then indeed, after 1500, and especially after 1600, 
did trade come into its kingdom. The new monarchies (p. 319) 
stamped out feudal plunder and soon checked feudal tolls; the 
growing banking system furnished credits and security; and 
now the rich mines of Mexico and Peru poured a steady stream 
of gold and silver into Spain, whence the needed coin filtered 
into other parts of Europe to fertilize trade. The merchants, 1 
each with his retinue of adventurous and loyal ship-captains 
at sea and of skilled and trusted clerks on land, rose suddenly 
into a new estate — as distinct from the ordinary burgher as 
the burgher three centuries before had seemed from the villein. 
In 1350, a royal inquiry listed only 169 merchants in England. 
In 1600, twenty times that number were occupied with the Hol¬ 
land trade alone, while large stock-companies of other merchants 
were trading with Russia, India, and North America. France, 
Holland, England, Sweden, Denmark, each had its “ East India 
Company,” and most of these countries had trading companies 

1 A merchant was a trader with a foreign country. 


Trade needs 
help in the 
discovery of 
new worlds 


Business 
“ in the 
saddle ” 




364 


SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 


chartered by the kings for trade with other distant parts of 
the earth. Single merchants, too, sometimes owned large fleets 
for such trade, like Shakspere’s Antonio in The Merchant of 
Venice. 

Except for land, this class had more wealth by far than the 
nobles themselves, and lived with greater comfort. The kings, 
too, found the merchants a convenient source of revenue, and 
were inclined to favor them against the less profitable though 
socially superior nobles. Rising merchant class and decaying 
noble class hated and feared each other. Indeed, the mer¬ 
chants, alive to new ideas, made the strength of the Reformation 
everywhere outside of Germany; and the cruelty of the Spanish 
nobles toward the Dutch Protestants, and of French nobles 
toward the Huguenots, was due in part to their detestation for 
these ambitious rivals. 


The change 
in English 
rural 
industry 


The “ inclo¬ 
sures ” after 
1500 A.D. 


A great social change, like the rise of this new business society, 
is likely to be accompanied, for a time at least, by a sad depres¬ 
sion of some other class. This social fact is illustrated by the 
story of English industry, in this age. 

The golden age for English peasants was the half century from 
1450 to 1500, just after the disappearance of villeinage: The 
small farmer lived in rude abundance; and even the farm la¬ 
borer had his cow, sheep, or geese on the common, his four-acre 
patch of garden about his cabin, and good wages for his labor 
on the landlord’s fields. Sir John Fortescue (p. 310) boasts 
of this prosperity, as compared with that of the French 
peasantry: “They [English peasants] drink no water, unless 
at times by way of penance. They are fed in great abundance 
with all kinds of flesh and fish. They are clothed in good 
woolens. ... Every one, according to his rank, hath all things 
needful to make life easy and happy.” 

The large landlords had been relatively less prosperous. Since 
the rise of their old laborers out of villeinage, they were “ land- 
poor.” They paid high wages, while under the wasteful common- 
field system, crops were small. But by 1500 a change be¬ 
gan which enriched the landlords and cruelly depressed the 



IN ENGLAND AFTER 1600 


365 


peasants. This change was the process of “ inclosures ” for 
sheep-raising. There was a steady demand for wool at good 
prices to supply the Flemish markets, and enterprising land¬ 
lords began to raise sheep instead of grain. Large flocks could 
be cared for by a few hands, so that the high wages mattered 
less; and profits proved so enticing that soon there was a mad 
rush into the new industry. 

But sheep-raising called for large tracts of land. It was pos¬ 
sible only for the great landlords; and even these were obliged 
to hedge in their share of the common “fields.” Therefore, 
as far as possible, they turned out small tenants whose holdings 
interfered with such “inclosures,” and often they inclosed also 
the woodlands and meadows, in disregard of ancient rights of 
common pasture. Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia , lamented 
these conditions bitterly: 

“A careless and unsatiable cormorant may compass about and in¬ 
close many thousand acres within one pale, and the husbandmen be 
thrust out of their own; or else by fraud, or violent oppression, or by 
wrongs and injuries, they be so worried that they be compelled to sell. . . . 

They [the landlords] throw down houses; they pluck down towns [vil¬ 
lages], and leave nothing standing but only the church, to be made a 
sheep-house.” 

Other statesmen, too, bewailed that sheep should take the Passing 
place of the yeomanry who had won Crecy, and who, Bacon 
said, were also “ the backbone of the revenue” ; and the govern¬ 
ment made many attempts to check inclosures. But law availed 
nothing; nor did peasant risings and riots help. Inclosures 
went on until the profits of sheep-raising and grain-raising found 
a natural level. 

This came to pass before 1600. The wool market was sup¬ 
plied ; the growth of town populations raised the price of grain; 
and the land changes created a wealthy landed gentry, to take 
a glittering part in society and politics. But this new “pros¬ 
perity” had a somber background. Half of the villages in Eng¬ 
land had lost heavily in population, and many had been wholly 
swept away. Great numbers of the peasants, driven from their 
homes, became “ sturdy beggars” (tramps); and all laborers were 



366 


SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 


thrust down to a lower standard of life, because the cost of food and 
clothing rose twice as fast as wages. Indeed, the gentleman 
“justices of the peace,” appointed by the crown, were given 
power to fix wages for farm work. And when tramps spread 
terror through the rural districts, the justices hanged them in 
batches. In fifty years, in the glorious day of Shakspere and 
Elizabeth, seventy thousand “beggars” were executed. 


Growth of 
manufac¬ 
tures 


And of 
commerce 


End of the 
gild system 
in England 


Meantime, England was becoming a manufacturing country. 
From the time of the Yorkist kings, the sovereigns had made 
the towns their special care. Elizabeth welcomed gladly the 
skilled workmen driven from the Netherlands by the Spanish 
wars, and from France by the persecution of the Huguenots. 
Colonies of these foreign artisans were given their special quarter 
in many an English city, with many favors, and were encouraged 
to set up there their manufactures, of which England had pre¬ 
viously known almost nothing. Soon, English wool was no 
longer sold abroad. It was worked up at home. These new 
manufactures gave employment to great numbers of work¬ 
men, and finally absorbed the classes driven from the land. 

And in turn, this manufacturing fostered commerce. By 
1600, England was sending, not merely raw materials as for¬ 
merly, but her finished products, to distant markets. And 
then, by purchase of land and by royal gifts from the confis¬ 
cated church property, the members of the new merchant class 
rose into the new gentry, and their capital and energy helped to 
restore prosperity to the land. 

At the same time the rapid growth of manufactures worked 
a favorable change in the life of the workers. The gild system, 
with its vexing rules, broke down in England (though retained 
much longer on the continent), and was replaced by the so- 
called “domestic system.” Manufacturing was still carried on 
by hand, and mainly in the master’s house ; but the masters se¬ 
cured freedom from gild control and rapidly introduced im¬ 
proved methods. Nearly two centuries later in Paris a hatter won 
great popularity by making better hats than his competitors, — 
mixing silk with his wool; but his jealous gild brothers had his 



IN ENGLAND AFTER 1600 


367 


entire stock destroyed, completely ruining him, because he 
had broken the gild rules requiring that hats should be made 
of ‘‘pure wool/’ This illustrates only one of the countless out¬ 
grown restrictions from which English manufacturers escaped 
about 1600. 

But the very success of Europe in winning the long-needed 
money for its trade had led men into a new and mischievous de¬ 
lusion. For some two hundred years after 1600, every one who 
thought upon such matters at all, believed that money (instead 
of being merely a convenient measure for wealth) was itself the 
only real wealth. Under the influence of this “ Mercantile ” 
theory, the new nations began at once to build up new barriers 
against foreign trade — less hurtful, to be sure, than the old feudal 
toll system, but harmful enough to curse the world down to 
the present day. Governments long believed that the only way 
a country could get riches was not by producing more goods 
or by saving more of what it had, but by getting more gold and 
silver money. 

Each country accordingly sought to avoid bringing in imports 
— as though it could always sell without ever buying. Each 
sought, too, to get colonial possessions in the new worlds that 
might supply it with gold and silver, or at least with those arti¬ 
cles which otherwise had to be imported from foreign lands. 
And, of course, each tried to keep its colonies from buying from 
any one but the “mother” country. This false “political 
economy” was soon to lead to a century of new wars, and still 
hinders real brotherhood among men. 

Exercise. — Compare this English inclosure movement with that in 
Italy in the time of the Gracchi, and explain why finally it was less 
ruinous. 


The 

“ Mercan¬ 
tile ’ ’ theory 





CHAPTER XXXIX 


PURITANISM AND POLITICS IN ENGLAND 

I. UNDER THE FIRST STUARTS, 1603-1642 


The English 
church in 
1600 


“ Low- 
church ” 
Puritans 


The 

Separatists 


England escaped a strictly “religious” war; but for two 
generations after 1600 the burning questions in 'politics as 
in religion had to do with Puritanism. Within the established 
Episcopal church the dominant party had strong “ High-church ” 
leanings. It wished to restore so far as possible the ceremo¬ 
nial of the old Catholic church, and it taught that the govern¬ 
ment of the church by bishops had been directly ordained 
by God. This party was ardently supported by the royal 
“head of the church” — Elizabeth, James, Charles, in turn; 
but it was engaged in constant struggle with a large, aggres¬ 
sive Puritan party. The same two parties had also sharp political 
differences, and the strife finally became civil war. 

Two groups of Puritans stood in sharp opposition to each 
other, — the influential “Low-church” element within the 
church, and the despised Separatists outside of it. The Low- 
churchmen had no wish to separate church and state. They 
wanted one national church — a Low-church church — to 
which everybody within England should be forced to conform. 
They desired also to introduce more preaching into the serv¬ 
ice, to simplify ceremonies, and to abolish altogether certain 
customs which they called “Romish,” — the use of the sur¬ 
plice, and of the ring in marriage, of the sign of the cross in 
baptism, a'nd (some of them) of the prayer-book. There was even 
a subdivision among them inclined to the Presbyterian church govern¬ 
ment, as it existed in Scotland. 

The Independents, or “Puritans of the Separation,” be¬ 
lieved that there should be no national church, but that each 
local religious organization should be a little democratic so¬ 
ciety, wholly separate from the civil government, and even 

368 


UNDER THE FIRST STUARTS 


369 


independent of other churches. These Independents were 
the Puritans of the Puritans. To all other sects they seemed 
mere anarchists in religion. Elizabeth persecuted them 
savagely, and her successor continued that policy. Some 
of the Independent churches fled to Holland; and one of them, 
from Scrooby in northern England, after staying several 
years at Leyden, founded Plymouth in America (the “Pilgrims” 
of 1620). 

Political liberty in England had fallen low under the Tudors 
(p. 311); but, after all, Henry VIII and Elizabeth had ruled 
absolutely, only because they made use of constitutional forms 
and because they possessed a shrewd tact which taught them 
just where to stop. Moreover, toward the close of Elizabeth’s 
reign, when foreign perils were past, men spoke again boldly 
of checks upon the royal power. 

Elizabeth was succeeded by James I (James Stuart), al¬ 
ready king of Scotland (footnote, p. 339). James was learned 
and conceited, — “ the wisest fool in Christendom,” as Henry 
IV of France called him. He believed sincerely in the “di¬ 
vine right” of kings. That is, he believed that the king, as 
God’s anointed, was the source of law and could not himself be 
controlled by law. He wrote a pompous and tiresome book 
to prove this. He and his son after him were despots on 
principle. The nation had been growing resti\;e under the 
cloaked, beneficent, elastic tyranny of the strong Tudors: 
naturally it rose in fierce opposition against the noisy, needless, 
and uncompromising tyranny of the weak Stuarts. 

There were, as yet, no organized political parties. But 
there was a court party, devoted to the royal power, consist¬ 
ing of most of the nobles and of the “ High-church” clergy; 
and an opposition country party, consisting of the merchants, 
the mass of country gentry, and the Puritan element gen¬ 
erally. The issue between the two was promptly stated. Even be¬ 
fore his first Parliament met, James I, in a famous utter¬ 
ance, summed up his theory: “As it is atheism and blas- 


Politicai 
conditions 
in 1600 


The 

“ divine- 
right ” 
Stuart 
kings 


And the 
English 
people 


The germs 
of political 
parties 




370 PURITANISM AND POLITICS IN ENGLAND 


Struggle 
between 
James I and 
Parliament 


Freedom of 
speech in 
Parliament 


phemy in a creature to dispute what God can do, so it is pre¬ 
sumption and high contempt in a subject to question what 
a king can do.” This became the tone of the court 
party. When Parliament assembled, it took the first chance 
to answer these new claims. The king, as usual, opened 
Parliament with a “speech from the throne.” As usual, the 
Speaker of the Commons replied; but, in place of the usual 
thanks to his majesty, he reminded James bluntly that in Eng¬ 
land the royal power was limited. “New laws,” said the 
Speaker, “cannot be instituted, nor imperfect laws reformed 
. . by any other power than this high court of Parliament. ” 
The Commons backed up this speech by a long paper, assert¬ 
ing that the privileges of Englishmen were their inheritance 
“ no less than their lands and goods.” 

James seldom called Parliaments after this, and only when 
he had to have money. Fortunately, the regular royal rev¬ 
enues had never been much increased, while the rise in prices 
and the wider duties of government called for more money 
than in former times. Both Elizabeth and James were poor. 
Elizabeth, however, had been economical and thrifty. James 
was careless and wasteful, and could not get along with¬ 
out new taxes. 

Thus Parliament was able to hold its own. It insisted 
stubbornly on its control of taxation, on freedom of speech, 
and on its .right to impeach the king’s ministers. In the 
Parliament of 1621, the Commons expressed dissatisfaction 
with a marriage that James had planned for his son Charles 
with a Spanish princess. James roughly forbade them to 
discuss such “high matters of state.” “Let us resort to our 
prayers,” said one of the members, “and then consider this 
great business.” The outcome of the consideration was a 
resolution, “(1) that the liberties, privileges, and jurisdic¬ 
tions of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright 
of the subjects of England; and (2) that the arduous and 
urgent affairs concerning the king, the state, the church, the 
defense of the realm, the making and maintenance of laws, 
and the redress of grievances, which happen daily within 


TAXATION AND REPRESENTATION 


371 


this realm, are proper subjects for debate in Parliament; 
and (3) that in the handling and proceeding of those busi¬ 
nesses, every member of the Commons . . . has freedom of 
speech ... to bring to conclusion the same.” 

James tore out this page of the records and dissolved Par¬ 
liament. But Prince Charles was personally insulted by the 
Spanish court, where he had gone to visit the princess; and in 
the last year of James’ life the prince succeeded in forcing 
him into war with Spain — to the boundless joy of the nation. 

In March, 1625, in the midst of shame and disgrace because 
of mismanagement of the war, James died. In May, Charles 
I met his first Parliament. He quarreled with it at once, 
dissolved it, and turned to an eager prosecution of the war, 
trusting to win the nation to his side by glorious victory. Ig¬ 
nominious failure, instead, forced him to meet his second 
Parliament in 1626. 

It is now that Sir John Eliot stands forth as leader of the 
patriots. Eliot stood for the control of the king’s ministers 
by Parliament. Everything else, he saw, was likely to prove 
worthless, if the executive could not be held responsible. 
The king's person could not be so held, except by revolution, 
but his ministers might be impeached; and, under fear of this, 
they might be held in control. So Eliot persuaded the Com¬ 
mons to impeach the Duke of Buckingham, the king’s favorite 
and the instrument of much past tyranny. Charles stopped the 
proceedings by casting Eliot into prison — in plain defiance of 
parliamentary privileges — and dissolving Parliament. 

The king fell back upon “ benevolences” (“ good-will” gifts) to 
raise a revenue. This was a device that originated during 
the Wars of the Roses. Henry VIII, absolute as he was, 
had renounced the practice. Now Charles revived and 
extended it, ordering his sheriffs in the county courts to ask 
benevolences from all taxpayers. But county after county 
refused to give a penny, often with cheers for Parliament. 

Then the king tried a “ forced loan.” This was a tax thinly 
disguised by the false promise to repay it. The king’s 


The early 
Parliaments 
of Charles I 


Sir John 
Eliot 
and the 
“ responsi¬ 
bility ” of 
the king’s 
ministers 


The king 
tries “ be¬ 
nevolences 


The 

“ forced 
loan ” 




372 


SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


England 

resists 


Parliament 
of 1628 


And the 
“ Petition of 
Right ” 


party used both force and persuasion. Pulpits, manned now 
by the anti-Puritan party, rang with the cry that to resist 
the king was eternal damnation. As a patriot of the time put 
it, the “High-church” clergy “improved the highwayman’s 
formula into ‘Your money or your life eternal.’” And Charles 
made use of more immediate penalties. Poor freeholders 
who refused to pay were “pressed” into the navy, or a tur¬ 
bulent soldiery was quartered in their defenseless homes; 
and two hundred English gentlemen were confined in dis¬ 
graceful prisons, to subdue their obstinacy. One young squire, 
John Hampden, who had based his refusal to pay upon a 
clause in Magna Carta, was rewarded with so close an im¬ 
prisonment that, his kinsman tells us, “he never did look 
the same man after.” 

The forced loan raised little revenue: and with an armament 
poorly fitted out, Buckingham sailed against France (with 
which his blundering policy had brought England into war). 
For the third time in four years an English army was 
wasted to no purpose; and sunk in debt and shame, Charles 
met his third Parliament in 1628. Before the elections, the 
imprisoned country gentlemen were released, and some sev¬ 
enty of them (all who appeared as candidates) sat in the new 
Parliament, in spite of the royal efforts to prevent their election. 

Charles asked for money. Instead of giving it, the Com¬ 
mons debated the recent infringements of English liberties 
and some way to provide security in future. The king offered 
to give his word that such things should not occur again, but 
was reminded that he had already given his oath at his coro¬ 
nation. Finally Parliament passed “the Petition of Right,” 
a document that ranks with Magna Carta in the history 
of English liberty. This great law first recited the ancient 
statutes, from Magna Carta down, against arbitrary im¬ 
prisonment, arbitrary taxation, quartering of soldiery upon 
the people in time of peace, and against forced loans and be¬ 
nevolences. Then it named the frequent violations of right 
in these respects in recent years. And finally it declared all 
such infringements illegal. 


PLATE LXII 







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SIR JOHN ELIOT 


373 


After evasive delays, Charles felt compelled to give his Eliot’s 
consent (and accordingly the “petition” became a great resolutlons 
statute); but at once, in a recess of Parliament, he broke the 
provisions regarding taxes. Parliament reassembled in bit¬ 
ter humor. Heedless of the king’s plea for money, it turned 
to punish the officers who had acted as his agents in recent 
infringements of the law. The Speaker stopped this business 
by announcing that he had the king’s command to adjourn 
the House. 1 Men knew that it would not be permitted to 
meet again, and there followed a striking scene. The Speaker 
was thrust back into his chair and held there; 2 the doors 
were locked against the king’s messenger; and Eliot in a 
ringing speech moved a series of resolutions which were to 
form the platform of the liberal party in the dark years to 
come. Royalist members cried, Traitor! Traitor! Swords 
were drawn. Outside, an usher pounded at the door with a 
message of dissolution from the king. But the bulk of the 
members sternly voted the resolutions, declaring traitors to 
England (1) any one who should bring in innovations in 
religion without the consent of Parliament, (2) any minister 
who should advise the illegal levy of taxes, (3) any officer 
who should aid in their collection, and (4) every citizen who 
should voluntarily pay them. 

And in the moment’s hush, when the great deed was done, Eliot’s 
Eliot’s voice was heard once more, and for the last time, in death 
that hall: “For myself, I further protest, as I am a gentleman, 
if my fortune be ever again to meet in this honorable as¬ 
sembly, where I now leave off, I will begin again.” Then 
the doors swung open, and the angry crowd surged out. 

Eliot passed to the Tower, to die there a prisoner four years 
later. But Eliot’s friends remembered his words; and, when 
another Parliament did meet, where he had left off, they 
began again. 

1 The king could adjourn the Parliament from time to time, or he could 
dissolve it altogether, so that no Parliament could meet until he had called 
for new elections. 

2 If the Speaker left the chair, business was at an end. 




374 


SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


“No Parlia¬ 
ment ” 
years 


John 

Hampden 
and the 
“ ship- 
money ” tax 


Laud and 
Wentworth 


First, however, England passed through a gloomy period. 
No Parliament met for eleven years (1629-1640), and the king’s 
edicts were the only law. Charles sought, too, ingeniously 
to find new ways to get money, and his lawyers invented the 
device of “ ship-money.” In time of invasion, seaboard counties 
had now and then been called upon by earlier kings to furnish 
ships for the national navy. Charles stretched this custom 
into a precedent for collecting a “ship-money tax” from all 
England in time of peace. 

John Hampden (p. 372) refused to pay the twenty shillings 
assessed upon his lands, and the famous ship-money case 
went to the courts (1637). The slavish judges decided for the 
king — as had been expected. The king’s friends were jubi¬ 
lant, seeing in the new tax “ an everlasting supply on all occa¬ 
sions”; but Hampden had won the moral victory he sought. 
The twelve-day argument of the lawyers attracted wide at¬ 
tention, and the court in its decision was compelled to state 
the theory of despotism in its naked hideousness. It declared 
that there was no power to check the king’s authority over his 
subjects, — their persons or their money, — “For,” said the 
Chief Justice, “no act of Parliament makes any difference.” 
If England submitted now, she would deserve slavery. 

The chief servants of the crown during this period w r ere 
Archbishop Laud and Thomas Wentworth. Wentwmrth had 
been one of the leaders in securing the Petition of Right, but 
soon afterward he passed over to the side of the king and be¬ 
came Earl of Strafford. His old associates looked upon him as a 
traitor to the cause of liberty. 

Laud was an extreme High-churchman and a conscientious 
bigot. He reformed the discipline of the church and ennobled 
the ritual; but he persecuted the Puritan clergy cruelly, with 
imprisonment and even by the cutting off of ears. (As a result 
of this and of the political discouragement, that sect founded 
the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Practically all the immi¬ 
gration this colony received, before the American Revolu¬ 
tion, came in the ten years 1630-1640, while Charles ruled 
without Parliament.) 


THE LONG PARLIAMENT 


375 


In 1638 Laud tried to force Episcopacy on Presbyterian 
Scotland. (Scotland had been joined to England when her 
King James had become king of England, but each country 
had its own Parliament, laws, and church. The union was 
“personal,” and consisted in the fact that the two countries 
had the same king.) But when the clergyman of the great 
church at Edinburgh appeared first in surplice, prayer-book 
in hand, Jenny Geddes, a servant girl, hurled her stool at 
his head, crying, — “ Out, priest! Dost say mass at my 
lug [ear]!” The service broke up in wild disorder, and there 
followed a strange scene in the churchyard where stern, 
grizzled men drew blood from their arms, wherewith to sign 
their names to a “Solemn Oath and Covenant” to defend 
their own form of religion with their lives. This Covenant 
spread swiftly over all Lowland Scotland, and the Covenant¬ 
ers rose in arms and crossed the border. 

Charles’ system of absolutism fell like a house of cards. 
He could get no help from England without a Parliament; 
and (November, 1640) he called the Long Parliament. The 
great leaders of that famous assembly were the Commoners 
Pym, Hampden, Sir Harry Vane, 1 and, somewhat later, Cromwell. 
Pym took the place of Eliot, and promptly indicated that the 
Commons were the real rulers of England. When the Lords 
tried to delay reform, he brought them to time by his veiled 
threat: he “ should be sorry if the House of Commons had to 
save England alone.” 

The Scots remained encamped in England; so the king 
had to assent to Parliament’s bills. Parliament first made 
itself safe by a law that it could he dissolved only by its own vote. 
Then it began where Eliot had left off, and sternly put into 
action the principles of his last resolutions. Laud, who had 
“brought in innovations in religion,” and Wentworth, who had 
advised and helped carry out the king’s policy, were condemned 
to death as traitors. The lawyers who had advised ship- 
money, and the judges who had declared it legal, were cast 
into prison or driven into banishment. And forty committees 
i Vane had lived in Massachusetts and had been governor there. 


The 

Scottish 

Covenanters 


The Long 
Parliament 


John Pym’s 
leadership 


And Eliot’s 
old 

program 




376 


SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Parliament 

hesitates 


Pym’s 
“ Remon¬ 
strance ” 


Charles’ at¬ 
tempt to 
seize “ the 
five 

members ” 


were appointed, one for each county, to secure the punishment 
of the lesser officers concerned in the illegal acts of the govern¬ 
ment. These measures filled the first year, 1 and so far the 
Commons had been united. 

But now a split began. Moderate men thought enough had 
been done. To do more, they feared, would mean revolution 
and anarchy. So they drew nearer to the king. On the other 
hand, more far-sighted leaders, like Pym and Hampden, saw' the 
necessity of securing safeguards for the future, since the king’s 
promises were worthless. 

Pym brought matters to a head by introducing a Grand 
Remonstrance, — a series of resolutions which appealed to 
the country for support in further measures against the 
king, proposing, in particular, that the king’s choice of min¬ 
isters (his chancellor, and so on) should be subject to the 
approval of Parliament. After an all-night debate, marked 
by bitter speech and even by the drawing of swords, the 
Commons adopted the Remonstrance by the narrow majority 
of eleven votes, amid a scene of wild confusion (November 22, 
1641). Said Cromwell, as the House broke up, “If it had 
failed, I should have sold all I possess to-morrow, and never 
seen England more.” 

Charles tried to reverse this small majority by destroying 
Pym, Hampden, and three other leaders, on a charge of treason¬ 
able correspondence with the invading Scots. No doubt 
they had been technically guilty of treason. But such “trea¬ 
son” against Charles was the noblest loyalty to England. 
The Commons paid no attention to the king’s charges; and 
so Charles entered the House in person, followed to the door 
by a body of armed cavaliers, to seize “ the five members .” New^s 
of his coming had preceded him; and, at the order of the 
House, the five had withdrawn. But the despotic attempt, 
and weak failure, consolidated the opposition. London rose 
in arms, and sent trainbands to guard Parliament. And 
Parliament now demanded that the king give it control of the 


1 The trial of Laud came later, but he was already a prisoner. 


PLATE LXIV 



Charles I Orders the Speaker of the Commons to Point Out the Five Members. — (The Com¬ 
mons are in uproar; but note that in the king’s presence they have removed their hats, which they 
usually wore; cf. pp. 379, 385.) A painting by the American artist, Copley. 





























PLATE LXV 



Oliver Cromwell in armor. —A painting from life by Robert Walker. 
Cf. plate facing p. 373. 






THE PURITAN REBELLION 


377 


militia and of the education of the royal princes. Charles with¬ 
drew to the conservative North, and unfurled the standard 
of civil war (1642). 

For Further Reading. — Green’s English People (or his Short 
History ) is thrillingly interesting for this and the following periods. 

II. THE GREAT REBELLION AND THE “REVOLUTION” 

Many men who had gone with Parliament in its reforms, 
now chose the king’s side rather than open rebellion. The 
majority of the gentry sided with the king, while in general 
the merchant and manufacturing classes, the shopkeepers 
and the yeomanry fought for Parliament. At the same time, 
the struggle was a true “ civil war,” dividing families and old 
friends. The king’s party took the name “Cavaliers” from 
the court nobles; while the parliamentarians were called “ Round 
Heads,” in derision, from the cropped hair of the London 
’prentice lads. (The portrait of Cromwell shows that Puritan 
gentlemen did not crop their hair. Short hair was a “class” 
mark.) 

At first Charles was successful. Shopboys could not stand 
before the chivalry of the “Cavaliers.” But Oliver Cromwell y 
a colonel in the parliamentary army, had raised a troop known 
as Ironsides. He saw that the only force Parliament could 
oppose to the habitual bravery of the English gentleman 
was the religious enthusiasm of the extreme Puritans. Ac¬ 
cordingly, he drew his recruits from the Independents of the 
east of England, — mostly yeomen farmers. They were 
men of godly lives, who fell on their knees for prayer before 
battle, and then charged with the old Hebrew battle psalms 
upon their lips. By this troop the great battle of Marston 
Moor was won. Then Cromwell was put in chief command. 
He reorganized the whole army upon this “New Model”; 
and the victory of Naseby (1645) virtually closed the war. 

When the war began, many Episcopalians in Parliament 
withdrew to join the king. This left the Presbyterians almost 
in control. Before long this party was strengthened still 
further by the need of buying the aid of Presbyterian Scotland. 


The 

Civil War, 
1642-1645 


Cromwell’s 

Ironsides 


Quarrel be¬ 
tween Inde¬ 
pendents 
and Presby¬ 
terians 






378 


SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


The Com¬ 
monwealth, 
1648-1654 


Battle of 
Worcester 


Then Parliament made the English church Presbyterian. Soon, 
it began to compel all men to accept this form of worship. 
On this point, the Presbyterian Parliament and the Inde¬ 
pendent “New Model” quarreled. Charles, now a prisoner, 
tried to play off one against the other. “Be quite easy,” 
he wrote his wife, “as to the concessions I may grant. When 
the time comes, I shall know very well how to treat these rogues; 
and, instead of a silken garter [the badge of an honorary order of 
knighthood] I will fit them with a hempen halter.” ( 

But now the real government of England was in the army. 
A council of officers, with Cromwell for their head, prepared 
plans; and the whole army “sought the Lord” regarding them 
in monster prayer-meetings, and quickly stamped out the 
royalist and Presbyterian risings. Then, under order from 
the council of officers, Colonel Pride “purged” the House of 
Commons by expelling 143 Presbyterians. After “Pride’s 
Purge” (December, 1648), Parliament rarely had an attend¬ 
ance of more than sixty — out of an original membership 
of some five hundred. The “Rump” were all Independents, 
and their leader was Vane. (Pym and Hampden had died 
some time before.) 

This remnant of Parliament , backed by the army, abolished 
monarchy and the House of Lords, and brought “ Charles 
Stuart, that man of blood,” to trial for treason to England. 
Charles was executed, January 20, 1649, dying with better 
grace than he had lived. Then the “Rump” Parliament 
abolished Presbyterianism as a state church, and declared 
England a republic, under the name of the Commonwealth. 
“ The people ,” said a famous resolution, “ are, under God, the 
original of all just power; and the Commons of England in 
Parliament assembled, being chosen by the people, have the 
supreme power in this nation.” 

The Scots were not ready for such radical measures, and 
they were offended by the overthrow of Presbyterianism. 
So they crowned the son of the dead king as Charles II, and 
invaded England. Cromwell crushed them at Worcester, and the 
young “King of Scots” escaped to the continent. 


PLATE LXVI 



Trial of Charles I. — An engraving in Nelson’s “ True Copy of the Jour¬ 
nal of the High Court of Justice for the Tryal of King Charles I,” pub¬ 
lished in 1684 , and reproduced in Green’s English People. 


































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THE COMMONWEALTH 


379 


The Rump ruled four years more, but it was only the 
shadow of the Parliament chosen thirteen years before. 
Cromwell urged a new Parliament. Finally the Rump agreed 
to call one, but planned to give places in that body to 



Great Seal of the Commonwealth, 1651 , — the British Isles on one 
side, the nation (represented by the House of Commons) on the reverse. 
From Green’s English People. 


all its own members without reelection. Learning of this 
scheme, Cromwell hurried to the House with a file of mus¬ 
keteers and dissolved it in a stormy scene (1653). 

The real trouble was that, though the Independents had 
won control by the discipline of their army, they were after 
all only a small fraction of the nation. Cromwell tried for 
a while to get a new Parliament that would adopt a consti¬ 
tution, but the assemblies proved dilatory and fractious; 
and finally the army officers drew up a constitution. This 
“Instrument of Government” made Cromwell practically 
a dictator, under the title Lord Protector (1854). 

Cromwell’s rule was stained by shameful cruelties in Ireland ; 
but in other respects it was wise and firm. He made England 
once more a Great Power, peaceful at home and respected 
abroad ; and he gave freedom of worship to all Protestant sects, 
— a more liberal policy in religion than could be found any¬ 
where else in that age except in Holland and in Roger Wil¬ 
liams’ little colony just founded in Rhode Island. At the 
best, however, this government was a government of force, 



380 


SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


The 

Restoration 
of 1660 


The 

Episcopal 

church 

restored 



The noble experiment of a republic had failed miserably in 
the hands of its friends; and, on Cromwell’s death, the 
nation, with wild rejoicings, welcomed back Charles II in “ the 
Restoration” of 1660. 

With the Restoration, the great age of Puritanism closed. 
The court, and the young cavaliers all over the land gave 

themselves up to shame¬ 
ful licentiousness. (But, 
in just this age of de¬ 
feat, Puritanism found 
its highest expression in 
literature. John Milton, 
years before, had given 
noble poems to the world 
— like his L’Allegro — 
but for many years he 
had abandoned poetry 
to work in Cromwell’s 
Council and splendidly 
to champion the Puri¬ 
tan cause and freedom 
of speech in prose pam¬ 
phlets. Now, a blind, 
disappointed old man, 
he composed Paradise 
Lost . And John Bunyan, 
a dissenting minister. 
Ring in jail under the 
persecuting laws of the 
new government, wrote 
Pilgrim’s Progress .) 

The established church became again Episcopalian, as it 
has since remained. In the reaction against Puritan rule, the 
new Parliament passed many cruel acts of persecution. All 
dissenters — Catholic and Protestant — were excluded from 
the right to hold municipal office; and all religious worship 
except the Episcopalian was punished with severe penalties. 


Blake’s Victory over Von Tromp at 
Plymouth in 1653. — Shortly before, Von 
Tromp, the Dutch admiral, had roundly 
defeated the British, and sailed up the 
Thames with a broom at his masthead. 
Blake’s victory restored England’s naval 
supremacy. This painting is by a recent 
French artist, Jules Noel. 





THE STUART RESTORATION 


381 


In spite of all this, the political principles for which the 
early Puritan Parliaments of Charles I had contended were 
victorious. Charles knew he could never get another Par¬ 
liament so much to his mind as the one that had been elected 
in the fervor of welcome at his restoration; and so he shrewdly 
kept that “Cavalier Parliament” through most of his reign 
— till 1679. But even this Parliament insisted strenuously 
on Parliament’s sole right to impose taxes, regulate the church, 
and control foreign policy; and Charles’ second Parliament 
adopted the great Habeas Corpus Act, which still secures 
Englishmen against arbitrary imprisonment — such as had 
been so common under Charles’ father. (The principle of 
this act was older than Magna Carta; but the law of Charles’ 
time first provided adequate machinery, much as we have it 
in the British Empire to-day, to enforce the principle.) 

Charles II was careless, indolent, selfish, extravagant, witty. 
He is known as the “Merry Monarch.” One of his courtiers 
described him in jesting rhyme as a king “who never said 
a foolish thing, and never did a wise one.” There is reason to 
think, however, that beneath his merry exterior Charles was 
nursing plans for tyranny far more dangerous than his father’s ; 
but he died suddenly (1685) before he was ready to act. 

Real political parties first appeared toward the close of this 
reign. Charles had no legitimate son; and his brother and 
heir, James, was a Catholic of narrow, despotic temper. The 
more radical members of Parliament introduced a bill to ex¬ 
clude him from the throne: and their supporters throughout 
England sent up monster petitions to have the bill made law. 
The Catholics and the more conservative part of Parliament, 
especially those who believed that Parliament had no right 
to change the succession, sent up counter-petitions expressing 
horror at the proposal. These “Abhorrers” called the other 
petitioners Whigs (Whey-eaters), a name sometimes given to 
the extreme Scotch Calvinists with their sour faces. The 
Whigs reviled their opponents as Tories (bog-trotters), a name 
for the ragged Irish rebels who had supported the Catholic 
and royal policy in the Civil War. The bill failed; but the 


Political 

liberty 

preserved 


Charles II, 
1660-1685 


Beginning 
of political 
parties 







382 


SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Whigs and 
Tories 


James II, 
1685-1688 


The 

“ Glorious 
Revolution ” 


The Bill of 
Rights 


William III, 
1688-1702 


rough division into parties remained. In general, the Whigs 
believed in the supremacy of Parliament, and sought on every 
occasion to limit the royal authority; while the Tories sustained 
the royal authority and wished to prevent any further exten¬ 
sion of the powers of the people. 

James II lacked his brother’s tact. He arbitrarily “sus¬ 
pended” the laws against Catholics, tried to intimidate the 
law courts, and rapidly increased the standing army. It 
was believed that he meant to make the established church 
Catholic; and this belief prepared England for revolution. 
The Whig leaders called for aid to William of Orange, the Stadt- 
holder of Holland, who had married James’ daughter Mary. 
William landed with a handful of troops. James found himself 
utterly deserted, even by his army, and fled to France. 

The story of this Revolution of 1688 is not a noble one. 
Selfishness and deceit mark every step. William of Orange 
is the only fine character on either side. As Macaulay says, 
it was “an age of great measures and little men”; and the term 
“ glorious,” which English historians have applied to the Revo¬ 
lution, must be taken to belong to results only. 

Those results were of mighty import. A Convention-Parlia¬ 
ment declared the throne vacant, drew up the great Decla¬ 
ration of Rights, the “third great document in the Bible 
of English Liberties” (stating once more the fundamental 
liberties of Englishmen), and elected William and Mary 
joint sovereigns on condition of their assenting to the Decla¬ 
ration. The supremacy of Parliament over the king was 
once more firmly established. The new sovereigns, like the 
old Lancastrians (and like all English sovereigns since) had 
only a parliamentary title to the throne. (The next regular 
Parliament enacted the Declaration of Rights into a “Bill 
of Rights.”) 

William III was a great-grandson of William the Silent. 
He ranks among England’s greatest kings, but he was a foreigner, 
and unpopular. (He spoke only his native Dutch, not Eng¬ 
lish.) His reign was spent mainly in war against the over¬ 
shadowing might of Louis XIV of France. While Stadtholder 


THE GREAT REBELLION OF 1688 


383 


of Holland, William had already become the most formidable 
opponent of Louis XIV’s schemes (p. 392); and now the French 
king undertook to restore James II to the English throne. 

This began the “Second Hundred Years’ War” between 
France and England. With slight intervals, the struggle lasted 
from 1689 to 1815. The story will be told in future chapters. 

Now it is enough to note that the long conflict turned the 
government’s attention away from reform and progress at home. 

Just in the first years, however, some great steps forward were 
taken — which were properly part of the Revolution. 

Religious reform was embodied in the Act of Toleration of 
1689, in which, at William’s insistence, Parliament granted free¬ 
dom of worship to Protestant dissenters (though even these most 
favored dissenters from the English church did not yet secure 
the right to hold office or to enter the universities.) The chief 
gains in political liberty come under four heads. 

1. Judges were made independent of the king (removable 
only by Parliament). 

2. A triennial bill ordered that a new Parliament should be 
elected at least once in three years. (In 1716, the term was 
made seven years.) 

3. Parliament adopted the simple device of granting money 
for government expenses only for a year at a time (instead of 
for the lifetime of the sovereign), and only after all other busi¬ 
ness had been attended to. Thenceforward, Parliaments have 
been assembled each year, and they have practically fixed their 
own adjournments. 

4. The greatest problem of parliamentary government (as 
Sir John Eliot had seen) was to control the “king’s ministers” 
and make them really the ministers of Parliament. Parliament 
could remove and punish the king’s advisers; but such action 
could be secured only by a serious struggle, and against noto¬ 
rious offenders. Some way was wanted to secure ministers ac¬ 
ceptable to Parliament easily and at all times. 

This desired “cabinet government” was secured indirectly Beginning of 
through the next century and a half; but the first important 
steps were taken in the reign of William. At first William tried 





384 


SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Growth of 
cabinet 
government 
under the 
Georges 


Sir Robert 
Walpole 


to unite the kingdom, and balance Whigs and Tories, by keep¬ 
ing the leaders of both parties among his ministers. But he 
was much annoyed by the jealousy and suspicion which Parlia¬ 
ment felt toward his measures, and by the danger of a deadlock 
between king and Parliament at critical times. Then a shrewd 
political schemer suggested to the king that he should choose 
all his advisers and assistants from the Whigs, who had a ma¬ 
jority in the House of Commons. Such ministers would have 
the confidence of the Commons; and that body would support 
their proposals, instead of blocking all measures. William ac¬ 
cepted this suggestion; and a little later,when the Tories for 
a time secured a majority, he carried out the principle by re¬ 
placing his “cabinet” with leading Tories. This was the begin¬ 
ning of ministerial government, or of “responsible ministries.” 

William, however, was a powerful ruler. He was not a tyrant 
in any way; but he believed in a king’s authority, and he suc¬ 
ceeded for the most part in keeping the ministers the “ king’s min¬ 
isters ”— to carry out his policy. Queen Anne, Mary’s sister, 
(1702-1714) tried to maintain a similar control over her min¬ 
istry. But, like William and Mary, she too died without leaving 
children; and the crown passed by a new Act of Settlement to 
a great-grandson of James I, the German George I, who was al¬ 
ready Elector of Hanover. (This law, like the earlier one pro¬ 
viding for the succession of Anne, excluded nearer heirs because 
they were Catholics.) 

Neither George I nor his son George II spoke English; and 
so far as they cared for matters of government at all, they were 
interested in their German principality rather than in England. 
During the half-century (1714-1760) of these heavy German 
Georges, the government of England was left to the group of 
ministers. 

Unhappily, Parliament itself did not yet really represent the 
nation. Walpole, Prime Minister from 1721 to 1742, ruled 
largely by unblushing corruption. Said he cynically, “Every 
man has his price.” During his rule, it teas not a parliamentary 
majority that made the ministry, but the ministry that made the 
parliamentary majority. (The same method, used only a little 


PLATE LXVII 



White’s Chocolate House, — a painting by William Hugarth in 1733. Ho¬ 
garth was a “pictorial satirist,” who portrayed strikingly the follies of 
his age. Several of his paintings picture tavern life. “White’s” was 
the most celebrated resort in London. (Some fifty years later it grew 
into the first private “Club.”) 

There was a separate gambling room at White’s in Hogarth’s time, but here 
the dice are represented in use also in the public room. The picture is 
the sixth in a famous series, known as The Rake's Progress. The central 
figure in front is the leading character of the series, — now cursing fren- 
ziedly at the completion of his financial ruin. At the small table to the 
left, a well-known nobleman is writing an I. O. U., to secure more gold 
from a waiting usurer. On the further side, another money lender is 
counting gold into the hand of an eager borrower. All these gamblers 
are so absorbed in their gaming that they have failed to notice flames that 
have broken out — so that a street “watch,” with staff and lantern, has 
just rushed in to arouse them to the danger. One other feature of the 
time is symbolized by the portrait of a noted highwayman (in riding boots 
and with pistol and mask protruding from his pocket) seated by the fire¬ 
place, so lost in thought that the boy with the glass cannot get his atten¬ 
tion. Such * ‘ gentlemen of the road ’ ’ were not unknown in London taverns. 






























ENGLAND BECOMES GREAT BRITAIN 385 


less shamelessly, was the means by which the ministers of George 
III in the next generation managed Parliament and brought it 
to drive the American colonies into war.) 


Meantime England had 
had joined Scotland and 
England under one 
crown. In 1707 this 
“personal union” was 
made a true consolida¬ 
tion by the “Act of Un¬ 
ion,” adopted by the 
Parliaments of both 
countries. Scotland 
gave up her separate 
legislature, and became 
part of the “ United 
Kingdom, ” with the 
right to send members 
to the English Parlia¬ 
ment and to keep her 
own established Presby¬ 
terian church. Halfway 
between these two dates, 
Cromwell completed the 
conquest of Ireland. 
And that same seven¬ 
teenth century had seen 
a vaster expansion of 
England and of Europe, 
to which we now turn. 


become Great Britain. James I (1603) 



House of Commons. — From part of a 
painting by Hogarth in 1730. (For an 
account of the artist, see Plate opposite.) 
The figures in the foreground are Sir 
Robert Walpole and the Speaker (Ons¬ 
low) . Several other faces also are por¬ 
traits. Note the wigs, the cocked hats 
(worn by all members except when ad¬ 
dressing the House), and the quill pen 
in the hand of the clerk. The represen¬ 
tation of the hall is perhaps the best we 
have of the old hall in which the Com¬ 
mons sat before the erection of the pres¬ 
ent Parliament buildings. 


England 
grows into 
Great 
Britain 


For Further Reading. — It is desirable for reading students to 
continue Green at least through the Revolution of 1688. Blackmore’s 
Lorna Doone is a splendid story which touches some passages in the 
history of the closing seventeenth century. 

Exercise. — The dates in English seventeenth-century history are 
important for an understanding of early American history: especially, 
1603 (accession of James I); 1629-1640 (No-Parliament period); 1648- 
1660 (Commonwealth); 1660 (Restoration); 1688 (Revolution). 





CHAPTER XL 


EXPANSION OF EUROPE INTO NEW WORLDS 


The center 
of historical 
interest 
shifts 
westward 


Spain in 
America 


Defeat of 
the Armada, 
1588 


France in 
America 


Columbus and Da Gama (pp. 326-327) had doubled the size 
of the known earth, added a new stir to European thought, and 
revolutionized the distribution of wealth in Europe. The cen¬ 
ter of historical interest shifted westward once more. The Med¬ 
iterranean, for two thousand years the one great highway be¬ 
tween Europe and the Orient, gave way to the Atlantic and the 
w passage round the Cape.” The cities of Italy lost their leader¬ 
ship both in commerce and in art, while vast gain fell to the sea¬ 
board countries on the Atlantic. For a hundred years, it is true, 
direct gains were confined to the two countries which had begun 
the explorations. Portugal built up a rich empire in the Indian 
Ocean and in the Pacific, and an accident gave her Brazil. 
Otherwise, the sixteenth century in America belongs to Spain. 

The story of Spain’s conquests is a tale of heroic endurance, 
marred by ferocious cruelty. Not till twenty years after the 
discovery did the Spaniards advance to the mainland of Amer¬ 
ica for settlement; but, once begun, her handful of adventurers 
swooped north and south. By 1550, she held all South America 
(save Portugal’s Brazil), all Central America, Mexico, the Cal- 
ifornias far up the Pacific coast, and the Floridas. 

Nor was Spain content with this huge empire. She was plan¬ 
ning grandly to occupy the Mississippi valley and the Ap¬ 
palachian slope in America, and to seize Holland and England in 
Europe; but in 1588 she received her fatal check, at the hands 
of the English sea dogs, in the ruin of her Invincible Armada. 

For a time France seemed most likely to succeed Spain as mis¬ 
tress in North America. In 1608 Champlain founded the first 
permanent French colony at Quebec. Soon canoe-fleets of tra¬ 
ders and missionaries were coasting the shores of the Great Lakes 

386 



FRANCE IN AMERICA 


387 



and establishing stations at various points still known by French 
names. Finally, in 1682, after years of gallant effort, La Salle 
followed the Mississippi to the Gulf, setting up a French claim 
to the entire valley. From that time New France consisted of 


La Salle Taking Possession of the Mississippi Valley (under the 
name Louisiana ) for France. — This picture, exhibited by Marchand 
at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, is faithful to La Salle’s account. The 
act was performed at the mouth of the river, with legal attestation ; and 
to it are traced land titles over much of the valley to-day. 


a colony on the St. Lawrence, in the far north, and the semi- 
tropical colony of New Orleans, joined to each other by a thin 
chain of trading posts and military stations along the connect¬ 
ing waterways. 

It is easy to point out certain French advantages in the race French 
with England for North America. At home French statesmen advanta g e s 
worked steadily to build a French empire in the New World, 
while the English government for the most part ignored English 
colonies. The thought of such empire for their country, too, 
inspired French explorers in the wilderness — splendid patriots 
like Champlain, Ribault, and La Salle. France also sent forth 















388 


EXPANSION OF EUROPE 


Weak points 
in French 
colonization 


Lack of 
homes 


Paternalism 
in industry 


Lack of 
political life 


the most zealous and heroic of missionaries to convert the sav¬ 
ages. Moreover, the French could deal with the natives better 
than the stiffer, less sympathetic English could ; and the French 
leaders were men of far-reaching views. 

But though the French colonies were strong in the leaders, they 
were weak in some vital matters that depended on the mass of 
the colonists. They lacked homes, individual enterprise, and 
political life. 

1. Except for a few leaders and missionaries, the settlers were 
either unprogressive peasants or reckless adventurers. For the 
most part they did not bring families, and, if they married, they 
took Indian wives. Agriculture was the only basis for a perma¬ 
nent colony; but these colonists turned instead to trapping 
and the fur trade, and adopted Indian habits. 

2. Paternalism smothered private enterprise. New France 
was taught to depend, not on herself, but on the aid and di¬ 
rection of a government three thousand miles away. Trade 
was shackled by silly restrictions, and hampered by silly en¬ 
couragements. The rulers did everything. “Send us money 
to build storehouses” ran the begging letters of the colonial 
governors to the French king. “Send us a teacher to make 
sailors. We want a surgeon.” And so, at various times, re¬ 
quests for brickmakers, iron-workers, pilots. New France got 
the help she asked; but she did not learn to walk alone. 

3. Political life, too, was lacking. France herself had become 
a centralized despotism ; and, in New France, as a French writer 
(Tocqueville) says, “this deformity was seen as though mag¬ 
nified by a microscope.” No public meetings could be held 
without special license from the governor; and, if licensed, they 
could do nothing worth while. The governor’s ordinances (not 
the people) regulated pew rent, the order in which dignitaries 
should sit in church, the number of cattle a man might keep, 
the pay of chimney sweeps, the charges in inns, and so on. “ It 
is of greatest importance,” wrote one official, “that the people 
should not be at liberty to speak their minds.” 

Worse than that the people had no minds to speak. In 
1672, Frontenac, the greatest governor of New France, tried to 












PLATE LXVIII 


THE PRINCIPAL! 

N A V1G ATIONS,VO l A- 

GES AND D IS CO V.HR1ES OF THE 
L iiglini rtation,raack* by Sea or oner Card, 

to thetyoM remote and jartfesl dislant Quarters of 
the earthat any ttmc-within the compafle 

/ !■■ ffc eiinfaudedmt!/three 

. t '• IcueiiU du t',44'C- ir.ihis: to t!ic jit- - ' ■ ■ 41 

. T . * -*" IWsWiS*,flrtK*r™«hemn. ■ ■ 1 

<.'t < »vcc 

I :rR, contenting theperfonall trauelsofche F.nglilh vnto Iudaa,Syria,A- 

.. ,thc c uicr Euphrates, Babylon, Balftra , the ter fan Gulfe, Ormuz ., Chaul, 
wa,India, and many I Hands adioyningto the South part? ot lMJis : toge¬ 
ther with the like vnto Egypt, the chiefcllports and places of Africa with¬ 
in and without the Streight of Gibraltar, and about the famous Proraon- 
torifi 0» Buena Efferan^a.^ 

The 1 e c or, d, com p rehet' di ng the worthy dilcoueries of the Englifh towards 
the N orth and Ndrthcalt by Sca,as oi Lapland, Scrikfinia, Corclia, the Baie 
- 4 s Wf/w/.tfjthc Ifks o iCofroiettc, Vaigats, and 2 \oua Zcmbla toward the 
great duet O/vvith die mightie Empire o {Ruffix, the Caff ion Sea^Gecrgia, 
■^Armen}i\,tHedia,Perfia,Boghar in Bxclriaf&c diuers kingdoms oi Tart aria, 

The third and laft,including the Englilh valian t attempts in fearching al- 
moft all the comers of the vaftc and new world of c. America „ from 75 .de- 
grees of Northerly latitude Southward,to Meta Incognita, Newfoundland, 
the maine of Virginia, the point oiTloridafhc Baic oft Mexico, all the In» 
land oiNouaHifpania, thccoaft of Terra frma, Braftll, the riuerofp/jttjto 
the Streight oiffttagelkn and throughit,and from it in the South Sea to 
Chili, Pcru.x alt/co, the Gulfe of California, Nona Albion vpon the backfide 
of Canada, further then euer any Chriftian hitherto hath pierced. 

If he re unto ii added the Iasi most renorvmcd Englifh Navigation, 
round about che whole Globe of the Earth. 

M'tfiirof.rtrtn, and Student fmetime 
ofClirrftchurchin Chcibrd. 



imprinted at London by George Bishop 
and Ralph News eri e, Deputies to 
Christopher Barker, Printer to the 

Qjiccisss m ( >P c-ee llent Maicll ie, 

tsS}. 


Facsimile of Title Page Of Hakluyt’s Voyages. — Richard Hakluyt 
was an English clergyman deeply interested in forwarding the colonization 
of America. At Raleigh’s suggestion he had written a pamphlet, Western 
Planting, in 1783, in which he used the phrase quoted in our text about 
putting “a byt” in an enemy’s mouth. 



MOTIVES FOR ENGLISH COLONIZATION 389 

introduce a colonial assembly — with power at least of discussion. 
The home government sternly disapproved this mild innova¬ 
tion, reminding Frontenac that at home the kings had done 
away with the old States General (p. 291), and directing him 
to remember that it was “proper that each should speak for 
himself, and no one for the whole.” The plan fell to pieces; 
the people cared so little for it that they made no effort to save it. 

Very different was the fringe of English colonies that grew 
up on the Atlantic coast, never with a king’s subsidies, often out 
of a king’s persecution, and asking no favor but to be let alone. 

During the last quarter of the sixteenth century, wdien Eliza¬ 
beth’s reign was half gone, England entered openly on a daring 
rivalry with the overshadowing might of Spain. Out of that 
rivalry English America was born — by the work not of sov¬ 
ereigns, but of individual adventurous patriots. Reckless and 
picturesque freebooters, like Drake and Hawkins, sought profit 
and honor for themselves, and injury to the foe, by raiding the 
wide-flung realms of New Spain, while the more far-sighted Gil¬ 
bert and Raleigh strove to “put a byt in the anchent enemy’s 
mouth” by establishing English colonies in America. 

These first attempts came to nothing because the energies 
of the nation were drained by the exhausting struggle with the 
might of Spain in Europe. Then James became king, and 
sought Spanish friendship; but Englishmen, beginning to 
fear lest their chance for empire was slipping through their fin¬ 
gers, insisted all the more that England should not now abandon 
Virginia, — “this one enterprise left unto these days.” 

Moreover, England needed an outlet for “crowded” popula¬ 
tion, 1 and the more enterprising of the hard-pressed yeomanry 
were glad to seek new homes beyond seas. This class furnished 
most of the manual labor in the early colonies. But captains and 
capitalists, too, were needed; and a new condition in England just 
after the death of Elizabeth turned some of the best of the mid¬ 
dle class toward American adventure. Until James made peace 

1 Only a tenth of the present population, but more than the islands could 
support under the crude industrial system of that date. Cf. p. 365. 


England’s 
rivalry with 
Spain in 
America 


Motives of 
English 
promoters 
at home 


Motives of 
colonists 





390 


ENGLAND IN AMERICA 


Puritanism 


England’s 

success 


with Spain (1604), the high-spirited youth, and especially the 
younger sons of gentry families, fought in the Low Countries 
for Dutch independence (p. 350) or made the “gentlemen- 
ad venturers” who under commanders like Drake paralyzed the 

vast domain of New 
fear. 


Spain with 
Now these men 
sought occupation 
and fortune in colo¬ 
nizing America, still 
attacking the old 
enemy, and in his 
weakest point. 

Such were the 
forces in English life 
that established Vir¬ 
ginia, early in the 
reign of James I. 
Toward the close of 
that same reign, Pu¬ 
ritanism was added to 
the colonizing forces, 
and, before the Long 
Parliament met, there 
was a second patch 
of English colonies 
on the North Atlantic 
shore. After this, the 
leading motive for colonization was a desire to win a better home 
or more wealth, though late in the century, religious perse¬ 
cution in England played its part again in founding Pennsyl¬ 
vania. And so, from one cause or another, at the ti no of the 
“Revolution of 1688,” the English settlements i< America had 
expanded into a broad band of twelve great colonies, r aching from 
the Penobscot to the Savannah, with a total populatio , of a quarter 
of a million. 

These colonies all enjoyed the English Common Law, with 



Time cuts down ai) 
Both great and fmaih 

Made David reck bb 
Life. 

fflbaUs in the Sea 
God’s Voice obey. 


Xsrxss the great did 
die, 

And io mull you Sc I. 

Toutb forward l\\p 
Death fooneh tups 

Zacbtus he 
Did climb the Tree 
Lord to fee, 


A Page from the New England Primer, 
published in 1680.—This textbook held its 
place in the schools in New England un¬ 
til after the American Revolution. Those 
schools were one of the two or three most 
significant features of the English colonies. 



































































I 


I 



/ 




w 


A 





























GROWTH TOWARD DEMOCRACY 


391 


its guarantees for jury trial, freedom of speech, and other per¬ 
sonal liberties (such as were known in no other colonies for two 
hundred years), and they all possessed their own self-governing 
representative assemblies, modeled on the English Parliament. 

Moreover, not all England, but rather the more democratic part 
of English life, was transplanted to America. No privileged 
classes, nobles or clergy, ever made part of colonial America. 
And that part of English society which did come was drawn to¬ 
ward still greater democracy by the presence here of unlimited free 
land. When the Puritan gentlemen, who at first made up the 
governing body in Massachusetts colony, tried to fix wages for 
carpenters by law, as the gentry did in England (p. 366), the 
New England carpenters simply ceased to do carpenter work 
and became farmers. Thus wages rose, spite of aristocratic 
efforts to hold them down. Free land helped to maintain 
equality in industry, and so in politics; and the English col¬ 
onies from the first began to diverge from the old home in the 
direction of even greater freedom. 

In the next chapter we shall see how the story of American 
colonization merged with the story of European wars. 


Transfer of 
English 
freedom to 
America 


Democratic 

tendencies 

intensified 




CHAPTER XLI 


The 

“ Balance 
of Power ” 


Threatened 
by France 


First series 
of wars of 
Louis XIV 


DESPOTS AND WARS 

I. THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV, 1643-1715 

Toward the close of the “religious” Thirty Years’ War, we 
saw Catholic France aid Protestant Germany and Holland 
to break the power of Catholic Austria and Spain. Statesmen 
had begun to make it their chief object to keep any one country 
from becoming too strong for its neighbors’ safety; and these 
wars and alliances to destroy or to maintain the Balance of 
Power were the mark of the next hundred years — complicated 
soon by commercial greed for the control of the new worlds. 

For long after 1648, France, more than any other country, 
endangered the unstable “Balance”! In 1643 the throne of 
that country fell to Louis XIV. During the early years of this 
reign, Colbert, the great minister of the king, introduced economy 
into the finances, encouraged new manufactures, removed many 
of the absurd tolls that vexed trade, built roads and canals, 
and watched zealously over the-growth of New France in America. 
But in 1667 Louis began a series of wars that filled most of the 
next forty years. During that half-century, despotic France 
threatened freedom for the world, as Spain had done a century 
before, and as Ijohenzollern Germany has recently been threat¬ 
ening it. 

In the first twelve years of war, Louis sought to seize territory 
on his northeastern frontier. The Dutch Republic was his 
chief obstacle. The Dutch intrusted their government to Wil¬ 
liam of Orange (afterward William III of England; p. 382). 
With grim determination William finally let in the North Sea to 
drive out the French armies. Meantime he toiled ceaselessly 
in building up against France an alliance of European powers, 
until Louis was compelled to accept peace with only slight gains 
of territory from the Spanish Netherlands. 

392 


PLATE LXIX 



The French in Heidelberg, — a painting by Fedor Dietz. By the order 
of Louis, the French armies deliberately depopulated large districts. A 
striking passage of Macaulay tells the fate of one Rhine province: “The 
commander announced to near half a million human beings that he granted 
them three days’ grace. . . . Soon the roads and fields were black with 
innumerable men, women, and children, fleeing from their homes. . . . 
Flames went up from every market place, every parish church, every 
county seat.’’ Many of these fugitives finally came to America. 





PLATE LXX 









' '.' 


(fit 


AjXW 




Louis XIV and His Court Receiving “the Great Conde” after his victory at Seneffe.— This 
Prince of Conde (1621-1686) must not be confused with his Huguenot ancestor of the preceding century. 
He was a typical French noble of the age, capable, fearless, ostentatious, domineering. He was 
a famous general from the age of twenty; and, at fifty-three, in his victory at Seneffe over William 
of Orange, he still was so daring a fighter that he had three horses killed under him. 






















RUIN OF THE HUGUENOTS 


393 


During ten years of truce that followed, Louis continued to 
seize bits of territory along the Rhine — including the “ free 
city” of Strassburg. But the important event of this period 
was his treatment of the Huguenots. In 1685 he revoked the 
Edict of Nantes, and tried to compel the Huguenots to accept 
Catholicism. Dragoons were quartered in the Huguenot dis¬ 
tricts, and terrible persecutions fell upon those who refused to 
abandon their faith. Protestantism did finally disappear from 
France. But, though Louis tried to prevent any heretic from 
leaving France alive, tens of thousands (perhaps 300,000 in all) 
escaped to Holland, Prussia, England, and America. 1 The 
effect on France corresponded in a measure to the effect of the 
expulsion of the Moriscoes (pp. 351-2) on Spain. 

A second series of wars began in 1689 (p. 383). As before, 
the French armies were invincible in the field ; but, as before, 
William checked Louis by building up a general European al¬ 
liance. England had new taken Holland’s place as the center 
of opposition to French despotism. Louis fought mainly to 
get more Rhine territory; but this time he kept no gains. This 
war is known in Canadian history as “King William’s War.” 
The struggle had widened from a mere European war into a Titanic 
conflict between France and England for world-empire. 

Next, Louis eagerly seized a chance to put one of his grand¬ 
sons on the vacant Spanish throne, as Philip V, exclaiming ex¬ 
ultantly, “ The Pyrenees no longer exist.” But Europe united 
against France and Spain in the “War of the Spanish Succes¬ 
sion” known in Canadian history as “Queen Anne’s War.” 
In this struggle, for the first time, success in the field lay with 
the Allies. The English Marlborough and the Hapsburg Prince 
Eugene won terrible victories over the armies of France, at Blen¬ 
heim in Bavaria, and at Ramillies, Oudenarde , and Malplaquet 
in Belgium, the suffering battleground of the rival kings. 


The Edict 
of Nantes 
revoked 


Later wars 
of Louis XIV 


The 

“ Spanish 
Succession ” 


1 In America the Huguenots went mainly to the Carolinas; but some old 
Virginia families trace their origin to this immigration. In New York John 
Jay and Alexander Hamilton were both of Huguenot descent. And in 
Massachusetts the Huguenot influence is suggested by the names of Paul 
Revere, Peter Faneuil, and Governor Bowdoin. 





394 


AGE OF LOUIS XIV 


Peace of 
Utrecht 


Exhaustion 
of France 


French 
leadership 
in Europe 


The age of 
despots 


Russia and 
the Tartar 
Conquest 
of 1223 


The Peace of Utrecht (1713) left Philip king of Spain, but 
he had to renounce for himself and his heirs all claim upon the 
French throne. France gained no territory in Europe, and in 
America she lost Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to England. 
England also acquired command of the Mediterranean, by se¬ 
curing from Spain the fortress of Gibraltar and the island of 
Minorca. Spain lost all her European possessions outside her 
own peninsula, ceding her Netherland provinces, the kingdom 
of Sicily and Naples, and the great Duchy of Milan in North 
Italy, to Austria. 

Louis XIV dazzled the men of his age, and won the title of 
the Great King ( Grand Monarque); but his wars exhausted 
France. At the close of his reign, the industry of France was 
declining under a crushing taxation, of which more than half 
went merely to pay the interest on the debt he had created. Intel¬ 
lectually, however, France was now the acknowledged leader 
of Europe. The court of Louis XIV was the model on which 
every court in Europe sought to form itself. French thought, 
French fashions, the French language, became the common 
property of all polite society. 

“ I am the state ” is a famous saying ascribed to Louis XIV. 
Whether he said it or not, he might have done so with perfect 
truth. So might almost any monarch of his day, outside of 
England. Louis called the English Parliament “ an intolerable 
evil.” If England and Holland had not withstood his ambitious 
dreams of empire, free government would then have perished 
from the earth. 

II. THE RISE OF RUSSIA 

Early Russian history is a blank or a mass of legends. We 
know that before the year 900, there was a, prince at Moscow 
ruling over the Russian Slavs from Novgorod to Kiev. Toward 
the close of the next century, Greek Christianity was introduced 
from Constantinople, and Greek civilization began slowly to 
make progress among the Russians. But about 1200, a great 
military leader appeared among the heathen Tartars who peopled 



THE RISE OF RUSSIA 


395 


the vast plains to the East. Taking the title Genghis Klian 
(Lord of Lords), he organized the scattered nomad tribes into 
a terrible fighting machine, and set out to conquer the world. 
The ancient Scythian invasions were repeated upon a larger 
scale and with greater horrors. Genghis turned fertile countries 
into deserts and populous districts into tombs. In 1223 the rising 
Christian state of Russia was crushed, and the Mongol empire 
reached from Peking and the Indus to Crimea and the Dnieper. 

The death of the Great Khan (1227) recalled his son to Asia; 
but ten years later the assault on Europe was renewed. Mos¬ 
cow was burned, and northern Russia became a tributary 
province. Again Western Europe was saved only by the death 
of a Mongol emperor. Soon after, the huge Tartar realm fell 
into fragments. But the whole Russian realm has felt ever since 
the baleful influence of the long Tartar dominion. 

In 1480 a tributary Russian prince threw off the Tartar yoke, 
and one of his near successors, Ivan the Terrible, took the title 
Tsar (p. 219). Under this Ivan, by 1550, when the religious 
wars were beginning in Western Europe, Russia reached from 
the inland Caspian northward and westward over much of the 
vast eastern plain of Europe, stretching even into Asiatic 
Siberia. But it had no seacoast except on the ice-locked Arctic, 
and no touch with Western Europe. Tartars and Turks still 
shut it off from the Black Sea; the Swedes shut it from the 
Baltic (p. 355); and the Poles prevented any contact with Ger¬ 
many. The Tsars imitated the Tartar khans in their rule and 
court; and the Russian people were Asiatic in dress, manners, 
and thought. 

To make this Russia a European Power was the work of Peter 
the Great. Peter was a barbaric genius of tremendous energy, 
clear intellect, and ruthless will. Early in his reign, the young 
Tsar decided to learn more about the Western world he had 
admired at a distance. In Holland, as a workman in the navy 
yards, he studied shipbuilding. He visited most of the coun¬ 
tries of the West, impressing all who met him with his insatiable 
voracity for information. He inspected cutleries, museums, 
manufactories, arsenals, departments of government, military 


Ivan the 
Terrible 


Peter the 

Great, 

1689-1725 






396 


RISE OF PRUSSIA 


Peter 

“ European¬ 
izes ” 
Russia 


Expansion 
toward the 
open seas 


Peter 

reaches the 
Baltic 


Later 
growth to 
1800 


Frederick of 
Hohenzol- 
lern, Elector 
of Branden¬ 
burg 


organizations. He collected instruments and models, and gath¬ 
ered naval and military stores. He engaged choice artists, 
goldbeaters, architects, workmen, officers, and engineers, to 
return with him to Russia, by promises, not well kept, of great 
pay. 

With these workmen Peter sought to introduce Western civ¬ 
ilization into Russia. The manners of his people he reformed 
by edict. He himself cut off the Asiatic beards of his courtiers 
and clipped the bottoms of their long robes. Women were 
ordered to put aside their veils and come out of their Oriental 
seclusion. Peter “tried to Europeanize by Asiatic methods.” 
He “civilized by the cudgel.” The upper classes did take on a 
European veneer. The masses remained Oriental. 

Peter was more successful in starting Russia on her march 
toward the European seas, to get “windows to look out upon 
Europe.” On the south, he himself made no permanent ad¬ 
vance, despite a series of wars with Turkey; but he bequeathed 
his policy to his successors, and, from his day to the opening of 
the World War, Constantinople was a chief goal of Russian 
ambition. The “Baltic window” Peter himself secured, by 
victory over Charles XII of Sweden, winning the east coast of the 
Baltic as far north as the Gulf of Finland. This district had 
been colonized, three centuries before, by German nobles (map 
after 302), and German civilization was strongly implanted 
there. In this new territory Peter founded St. Petersburg, 
renamed Petrograd in 1914. 

The next important acquisition of territory was under the 
Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter, who seized part of Fin¬ 
land from Sweden. Toward the close of the century, under 
Catherine II, Russia made great progress on the south along 
the Black Sea, and on the west at the expense of Poland (p. 401). 
This last change can be understood only in connection with the 
rise of Prussia. 

III. PRUSSIA IN EUROPE — ENGLAND IN NEW WORLDS 

Brandenburg was a little district in the northeast of Germany 
which became prominent in the twelfth century as a bulwark 


PLATE LXXI 



St. Basil’s Church, Moscow, — built in 1554-1557, during the reign of 
Ivan the Terrible. The structure was painted brilliantly in all the colors 
of the rainbow. It shows Oriental characteristics and some influence 
from the Byzantine architecture. 






PLATE LXXII 



Elector Welcoming Huguenot Refugees, — a modern painting by Hugo Vogel. 





















THE GREAT ELECTOR 


397 


against the Slavs. About 1200, the ruler became one of the 
Electors (p. 316) of the Empire. In 1415, the first line of 
Brandenburg Electors ran out; and Frederick of Hohenzollern, 
a petty count in the Alps (like the Hapsburgs a century and 
a half before), bought Brandenburg from the Emperor. 

Shortly after 1600 the Elector of Brandenburg fell heir to The Hohen- 
two considerable principalities, — the duchy of Cleves on the rns 
extreme west of Germany, and the duchy of Prussia outside the Prussia 
Empire on the extreme east. (Prussia was the name of a Slav 
and Lett district which the Teutonic Knights had conquered in 
the fourteenth century from the heathen Slavs, and which they 
held as vassals of the king of Poland.) 

Toward the close of the Thirty Years’ War, Frederick Wil- The 
liam, “the Great Elector,” came to the throne of Brandenburg Elector*” 

— a coarse, cruel, energetic, shrewd ruler. The Protestants and the 
were getting the upper hand in the war. Frederick William War 

joined them, and, at the Peace of Westphalia he secured eastern 
* Pomerania (p. 355), bringing Brandenburg to the sea. The 

“Great Elector” now crushed out all local assemblies of nobles Paternal 
in his provinces, and all local privileges. Then he built up an ^ es P° tlsm 
army among the largest and best in Europe, much more costly 
than his poor realms could well support. He was shrewd enough, 
however, to see the need of caring for the material welfare of 
his subjects, if they were to be able to support his selfish plans; 
and so his long reign (1640-1688) marks the beginning of the boasted 
Hohenzollern policy of “ good government.” He built roads and 
canals, drained marshes, encouraged better agriculture, and wel¬ 
comed to his realms, with their manufactures, the Huguenot 
fugitives from France. 

Frederick, son and successor of the Great Elector, was be- The kingly 
sought by Austria to join the alliance against Louis XIV (p. 393). tltle 
In reward for his aid, he then secured the Emperor’s consent to 
his changing the title “Elector of Brandenburg” for the more 
stately one of “King in Prussia” (1701). The second king of 
Prussia, Frederick William I, was a rude “drill sergeant,” 
memorable only as the stupid father of Frederick the Great. 

He did, however, expend what intellect he had, and what money 






398 


FREDERICK II OF PRUSSIA 


Frederick II, 
1740-1786 


England 
and France 
rivals for 
world 
empire 


he could wring from his subjects, in enlarging the Prussian army; 
and he had a curious passion for collecting tall soldiers from all 
over Europe. 

Frederick II (“the Great”) ascended the Prussian throne in 
1740. In the same year the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles VI, 
died without a male heir, and Frederick began his long reign 
by an unjust but profitable war. The Emperor Charles had 
secured solemn pledges from the powers of Europe, including 
Prussia, that his young daughter, Maria Theresa, should suc¬ 
ceed to his Austrian possessions. But now, with his perfectly 
prepared army, without having even declared ivar, on a trumped- 
up claim, Frederick seized Silesia, an Austrian province. 

This treacherous act was the signal for a general onslaught 
to divide the Austrian realms. Spain, France, Savoy, Bavaria, 
each hurried to snatch some morsel of the booty. But Maria 
Theresa displayed courage and ability, and she secured aid 
from Holland and England. This “War of the Austrian Suc¬ 
cession” closed in 1748. Frederick had shown himself greedy 
and unscrupulous, but also the greatest general of the age. He 
kept Silesia. Prussia now reached down into the heart of Ger¬ 
many, and had become the great rival of Austria. 

Much more important, though less striking, was the contest 
outside Europe. In America $ New England expedition cap¬ 
tured the French fortress of Louisburg. In India the French 
leader, Dupleix, captured the English stations. The treaty of 
peace restored matters to their former position, both in America 
and Asia, but the war made England and France feel more clearly 
than ever before that they were rivals for vast continents. Whether 
Prussia or Austria were to possess Silesia, whether France or 
Austria were to hold the Netherlands, were questions wholly 
insignificant in comparison with the mightier question as to 
what race and what political ideas should hold the New Worlds. 


The “ Seven 
Years’ 
War,” 
1756-1763 


In 1756 Austria began a war of revenge. Maria Theresa 
had secured the alliance of Russia, Sweden, and even of her old 
enemy, France. Four great armies invaded Prussia from dif¬ 
ferent directions, and Frederick’s throne seemed to totter. His 


i 

















































































PLATE LXXIII 



The Last Rally of Tippoo Sahib, —the Indian leader in the final struggle 
against England in the eighteenth century. From a drawing by a French 
artist, Emile Bayard. ^ 







WARS OF GREED 


399 


swift action and his military genius saved his country, in the 
victories of Rossbach and Leuthen. And the next year Eng¬ 
land entered the struggle as his ally. England and France had 
Remained practically at war in America and India through the 
brief interval between the two European wars. Braddock’s 
campaign in America (1754) took place during this interval; 
and now that France had changed to Austria’s side, England saw 
no choice but to support Prussia. 

In America this “ Seven Years’ War ” was known as the “ French 
and Indian War.” The struggle was literally world-wide. Red 
men scalped one another by the Great Lakes of North America, 
and Black men fought in Senegal in Africa; while Frenchmen 
and Englishmen grappled in India as well as in Germany, and 
their fleets engaged on every sea. Still the European conflict 
in the main decided the wider results. William Pitt, the Eng¬ 
lish minister, who was working to build up a great British em¬ 
pire, declared that in Germany he would conquer America from 
France. He did so. England furnished the funds, and her navy 
swept the seas. Frederick and Prussia, supported by English 
subsidies, furnished the troops and the generalship for the Euro¬ 
pean battles. The striking figures of the struggle are (1) Pitt, 
the great English imperialist, the directing genius of the war; 
(2) Frederick of Prussia, the military genius, who won Pitt’s 
victories in Germany; (3) Wolfe, who won French America 
from the great Montcalm; and (4) Clive, who established Eng¬ 
land’s supremacy in India. 

The treaty of peace, in 1763, left Europe without change. But 
in India the French retained only a few unfortified trading posts. 
In America , England received Florida from Spain, and Canada 
and the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley from France. 
France ceded to Spain the western half of the Mississippi Valley, 
in compensation for the losses Spain had incurred as her ally; 
and, except for her West Indian islands, she herself ceased to be 
an American power. Spain still held South America and half 
North America; but her vast bulk was plainly decaying day 
by day. Holland’s wide colonial empire, too, was in decline. 
Britain stood forth as the leading world-power. 


England 
wins 
America 
and India 
from France 


The Peace 
of 1763 






400 


EUROPEAN WARS OF GREED 


Why Eng¬ 
land won 
America 


The 

American 

Revolution 


The struggle in America had really been a war, not between Mont¬ 
calm and Wolfe, but between two kinds of colonization. Man 
for man, the French settlers were more successful woodsmen and 
Indian fighters than their English rivals; but they could not 
build a state so well. They got a good start first; but, after a 
century of fostering care (p. 388) the French colonies did not grow. 
When the final conflict began, in 1754, France, with a home popu¬ 
lation four times that of England, had only one twentieth as 
many colonists in America as England had — 60,000 to about 
1,200,000. Moreover, despite her heroic leaders, the mass 
of French colonists had too little political activity to care 
much what country they belonged to, so long as they were 
treated decently. Wolfe’s one victory at Quebec settled the 
fate of the continent. The lack of political vitality and of in¬ 
dividual enterprise in industry was the fatal weakness of New 
France. The opposite qualities made England successful. 
Says John Fiske: “ It is to the self-government of England, and 
to no lesser cause, that we are to look for the secret of that boundless 
vitality which has given to men of English speech the uttermost parts 
of the earth for an inheritance .” 

The American Revolution is the next chapter in this series 
of wars. That war began because the English government 
unwisely insisted upon managing American affairs after the 
Americans were quite able to take care of themselves. 1 Its real 
importance, even to Europe, lay in the establishment of an 
independent American nation and in teaching England, after 
a while, to improve her system of colonial government. But 
at the time, France and Spain saw in the American Revolution 
a chance to revenge themselves upon England by helping the 
best part of her empire to break away. 

1 The English colonial system in America had not been cruel or tyrannical 
nor seriously hampering in industry. Indeed, on both the industrial and 
political side, it was vastly more liberal than was the colonial policy of any 
other country in that age. But after Canada fell to England (p. 399), so 
that the colonists in the English colonies no longer feared French conquest, 
they began to resent even the slight interference of the English government. 
The freest people of the age, they were ready and anxious for more freedom. 
Cf. West’s American People , pp. 185-191. 



AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 


401 


England did lose most of her empire in America; but she 
came out of the war with gains as well as losses. She had been 
fighting, not America alone, but France, Spain, Holland, and 
America. Theodore Roosevelt has put finely the result and 
character of this wider struggle (Gouverneur Morris , 116): 

“England, hemmed in by the ring of her foes, fronted them with a 
grand courage. ... In America, alone, the tide ran too strong to be 
turned. But Holland was stripped of all her colonies; in the East, 
Sir Eyre Coote beat down Hyder Ali, and taught Moslem and Hindoo 
alike that they could not shake off the grasp of the iron hands that held 
India; Rodney won back for his country the supremacy of the ocean 
in that great sea-fight where he shattered the splendid French navy; 
and the long siege of Gibraltar [p. 394] closed with the crushing over¬ 
throw of the assailants. So, with bloody honor, England ended the 
most disastrous war she had ever waged.” 



Crossed Swords of Colonel William Prescott and Captain John Linzee, who 
fought on opposite sides at Bunker Hill. A grandson of Prescott and a 
granddaughter of Linzee married, and their offspring mounted these heir¬ 
looms in this way “in token of international friendship and family alli¬ 
ance.” Now in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 


Just before the American Revolution began, Russia, Prussia, 
and Austria united to murder the old kingdom of Poland 
and to divide the carcass. The anarchy of Poland gave 
its neighbors excuse. The population consisted of about twelve 
million degraded serfs, and one hundred thousand selfish, 
oligarchic nobles. The latter constituted the government. 
They met in occasional Diets, and, when the throne became 
vacant, they elected the figurehead king. Unanimous consent 
was required for any vote in the Diet, — each noble possessing 
the right of veto. 

Under such conditions, the Powers of Europe had begun to 
play with Poland at will. Catherine II of Russia determined 
to seize a large part of the country. Frederick II persuaded 


“ Parti¬ 
tion ” of 
Poland 










402 


BENEVOLENT DESPOTS 


his old enemy, Austria, to join him in compelling Catherine 
to share the booty. The “First Partition,” in 1772, pared 
off a rind about the heart. The Second and Third Partitions 
(1793, 1795), which “assassinated the kingdom,” had not even 
the pretext of misgovernment in Poland. The Poles had under¬ 
taken sweeping reforms, and the nation made a gallant defense 
under its hero-leader Kosciusko; but the giant robbers wiped 
Poland off the map. Russia gained far the greatest part of the 
territory , and she now bordered Germany on the east, as France 
did on the west. 


Frederick 
“ the 
Great ” 
in peace 


The 

“ benevo¬ 
lent 

despots ” 


Frederick IPs reign doubled the size of Prussia — but at 
the terrible cost of frontiers made only of fortresses and bay¬ 
onets. Frederick had shown himself a greedy robber and a mili¬ 
tary genius. With brutal cynicism he avowed absolute freedom 
from moral principle where a question of Prussia’s power was 
at stake. Success, he declared, justified any means. This 
faithlessness he practised, as well as taught; and his success 
made this policy the creed of later Hohenzollerns. 

But there was another side to Frederick’s life, which, more 
properly than his Avars or his diplomacy, earns him his title of 
“the Great.” Most of his forty-six years’ reign was passed in 
peace, and he proved a father to<his people. The beneficent work 
of the Great Elector was taken up and carried forward vigor¬ 
ously. Prussia was transformed. Wealth and comfort in¬ 
creased by leaps, and the condition of even the serfs was im¬ 
proved. L^nlike all the earlier Hohenzollerns, Frederick was 
also a patron of literature — though he admired only the arti¬ 
ficial French style of the age — and he was himself an author. 

Frederick is a type of the “crowned philosophers,” or “be¬ 
nevolent despots,” who sat upon the thrones of Europe in the 
latter half of the eighteenth century, just before the French 
Revolution. Under the influence of a new enlightened sen¬ 
timent, government underwent a marvelous change. It was 
just as autocratic as before, — no more by the people than be¬ 
fore, — but despots did try to govern for the people, not for 
themselves. 



AND THEIR FAILURE 


403 


Frederick’s genius and tireless energy accomplished some¬ 
thing for a time; but on the whole the monarchs made lamentable 
failures. One man was powerless to lift the inert weight 
of a nation. The clergy and nobles, jealous for their privileges, 
opposed and thwarted the royal will. Except in England 
and France, there was no large middle class to supply friendly 
officials and sympathy. The kings, too, wished no participation 
by the people in the reforms: everything was to come from 
above. When the “benevolent despots” had to choose be¬ 
tween benevolence and despotism they always chose despotism. 

Further Reading upon the subject of the last three chapters may 
profitably be confined to the struggle for the New Worlds. The student 
should read Parkman’s Works, especially his Montcalm and Wolfe and 
his Half Century of Conflict. The following biographies, too, are good: 
Wilson’s Clive, Bradley’s Wolfe, Morley’s Walpole. 

Review Exercises 


1. Fact Drills. 

a. Dates with their significance: 1713, 1740, 1763, 1783. 

b. List six important battles between 1500 and 1789. 

2. Review by countries, with “catch-words,” from 1500, or from some 

convenient event of about that date. 

3. Make a brief paragraph statement for the period 1648-1787, to 

include the changes in territory and in the relative power of the 
different European states. 





PART X-THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


“ Revolu- 
tions break 
through in 
the weakest 
places ” 


The middle 
class 


The nobles 
and clergy 


The 

peasants 


You must teach that the French Revolution was an unmitigated crime 
against God and man. — Wilhelm II to teachers of history. 

The Revolution was a creating force, even more than a destroying one. 
— Frederic Harrison. 


CHAPTER XLII 

FRANCE (AND EUROPE) BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

The “benevolent despots” had failed to reform society: 
now in France the people were to try for themselves. In that 
country the people were better off than anywhere else on the 
continent. They had risen far enough to see the possibility of 
rising further. But even there the social arrangements were 
atrocious. One per cent of the twenty-five million people were 
“privileged” drones (nobles and clergy), owning much more 
than half of all the wealth. Ninety-four per cent were cruelly 
oppressed workers, robbed of youth and life by crushing toil 
and insufficient food. Between these extremes came a small 
ambitious “middle class,” fairly prosperous and intelligent, but 
excluded from political influence, bearing a ruinous taxation, 
and bitterly discontented. This class (much larger than in 
any other continental country) was to furnish the ideas and most 
of the leaders for the Revolution. 

The privileged nobles no longer rendered service to society. 
They had become mere spenders and courtiers, — largely absentee 
landlords, not even living on their estates. The higher clergy 
(bishops and abbots) were the younger sons of the same noble 
families. They, too, squandered their immense revenues at 
court in idle luxury or vice, turning over their duties to sub¬ 
ordinates on paltry pay. (The Revolution found the village 
priests mostly on the side of the people.) 

Over much of France the peasants lived in hideous misery. 
Famine was chronic in that fertile land, as in Russia in more 

404 





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FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 


405 


recent years. Taxation and feudal extortion discouraged farm¬ 
ing. A fourth of the land lay waste. Of the rest, the tillage 
was little better than a thousand years before, with a yield a 
third less than in England. And if crops failed in one province, 
starvation followed (because of poor roads, and high tolls, and 
poverty, and the government’s carelessness) although neighbor¬ 
ing provinces might possess abundance. One royal official 
describes how, even in ordinary times, “the children very 
commonly die” because of the coarse bread of bran and acorns 
on which they fed. 

True, conditions varied greatly in different parts of France. 
In some districts the peasants were fairly prosperous, and as a 
whole they were far ahead of the peasants in Germany or Italy 
or Spain or Austria. They played a part in the Revolution be¬ 
cause they had already progressed far enough to feel discontent. 

Serfdom lingered in Alsace and Lorraine, — regions seized 
from Germany not long before (pp. 355, 393 ff.). Elsewhere 
the peasants had risen into villeinage somewhat like that in Eng¬ 
land before the uprising of 1381, four centuries before. Even 
when the peasant owned his garden spot, he owned it subject to 
many ancient feudal obligations. He could not sell it without 
paying for his lord’s consent, or sell any of his crop except in 
the lord’s market, with tolls for the privilege. Commonly, 
he could still grind his grain only at the lord’s mill, leaving 
one sixteenth the flour, and he could bake only in the lord’s 
oven, leaving a loaf each time in pay. Under no circumstances 
might he injure the rabbits or pigeons or deer that devoured 
his crop. On penalty of death, he might not carry a gun, even 
to kill wolves. He could not enter his own field to till it, when 
the pheasants were hatching or the rabbits were young. Year 
after year the crops were trampled by huntsmen or devoured 
by game. 

Added to all this was the frightful royal taxation. Louis XIV, 
we have seen, left France burdened with a huge war debt. The 
dissolute Louis XV wasted as much in vice as his predecessor 
had wasted in war, while much of the rest of the revenue was 
given away in pensions to unworthy favorites, or stolen by 


Survivals 

serfdom 


Crushing 

taxes 






406 


FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 


Forced 

labor 


“ Rack ” 
taxation 


The salt tax 


corrupt officials. (All receipts from taxation were subject to 
the king’s order — as if they had been merely his private bank¬ 
ing account. No report was made to the nation, but some 
facts leaked out. On the eve of the Revolution, three maiden 
aunts of the king were receiving yearly nearly half a million 
dollars in our values merely for their food — most of which 
amount, of course, went to enrich dishonest stewards.) 

Emptied in these shameful ways, the treasury was filled in 
ways quite as shameful. The clergy were wholly exempt from 
taxation by law; and the nobles escaped from some taxes by 
law, from others by bribery and intimidation. Said the rich¬ 
est man in France frankly — “I make arrangements with the 
officials, and pay only what I wish.” Full payment was made 
only by those least able to pay. 

Various clumsy devices, too, made the collection needlessly 
burdensome. Two of the many direct taxes were especially 
offensive in this respect. (1) Roads and canals were built 
and kept up by forced unpaid labor (the corvee). At the call of an 
official the peasant must leave his own work for this, no matter 
how critical the time. (2) The main revenue came from a tax 
assessed upon peasant villages only and fixed each year arbitrarily 
by the government. On one occasion, an official wrote: “ The 
people of this village are stout, and there are chicken feathers 
before the doors. The taxes here should be greatly increased 
next year.” So, too, if a villager lived in a better house than 
his neighbors, the officials made him pay a larger share of the 
common village tax. So the peasants concealed jealously what 
few comforts they had, and left their cottages in ruins. 

It is estimated that a peasant paid half his income in direct taxes 
to the government. Feudal dues and church tithes raised these 
payments to four fifths his income. And from the remaining 
fifth, he had not only to support his family but also to pay 
various indirect taxes. The most famous of these was the 
gabelle, the tax upon salt, 1 which raised the price of salt to four, 
ten, or twenty times its first value. Every family was compelled 

1 The man who sold the salt paid the tax to the government. The man 
who bought salt had of course to pay back the tax in a higher price. A tax 
collected in this way is called an indirect tax. 



DESPOTISM AND INEFFICIENCY 


407 


by law to purchase from the government at least seven pounds 
a year for each member over seven years of age, and thousands 
of persons every year were hanged or sent to the galleys for 
trying to evade this law. (Even then, only a fifth of the 
amount collected ever reached the treasury. Like the tax on 
candles, fish, flour, and other necessities, the salt tax was 
“farmed” to collectors, who paid the government a certain 
amount and then took for their profit what they could get above 
that amount.) 

Another class of vexatious taxes were the still remaining 
tolls on goods required not only at the frontier of France, but again 
and again, at the border of each province and even at the gate 
of each town. Fish, so great a necessity in a Catholic country, 
paid thirteen times their first cost in such tolls on their way to 
Paris from the coast. 

The government was a centralized despotism (p. 231). Di¬ 
rectly about the king was a Council of State. Subject to the 
king’s approval, it fixed taxes, drew up edicts, and ruled France. 
Its members were appointed by the king, and held office only 
at his pleasure. At the head of each province was a governor 
appointed by the king. Subject to the royal power, he was an 
unchecked despot. In the parish the mayor or S3 r ndic was 
sometimes chosen by the people, sometimes appointed by the 
governor; but in either case the governor could remove him at 
will. The parish assembly could not meet without the gov¬ 
ernor’s permission, and it could not take any action by itself. 
Had the wind damaged the parish steeple ? The parish might 
'petition for permission to repair it, — at their own expense, of 
course. The governor would send the petition, with his recom¬ 
mendation, to the Council of State at Paris, and a reply might 
be expected only after long delays, when perhaps the damage 
was beyond repair. 

Personal liberty, too, was wholly at the mercy of this arbitrary 
government. Any man might be sent to prison without trial, 
merely by a “ letter ” with the royal seal. Not only were “ letters 
of the seal ” used to remove political offenders: they were 


Complex 

tariffs 


The 

govern¬ 

ment 


Arbitrary 

imprison¬ 

ment 



408 


FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 


An 

inefficient 

despotism 


The spirit 
change 


also sold, to private men who wished to get rid of rivals. 
The government of Louis XV issued 150,000 such letters. 
Usually the imprisonments were for a few months; but some¬ 
times the victim was virtually forgotten and left to die in prison. 
Arthur Young, an English traveler in France just before the 
Revolution, tells of an Englishman who had been kept in a 
French prison thirty years, although not even the government 
held a record of the reason. 

This despotic government was clumsy and inefficient. 
France was still a patchwork of territories which the kings 
had seized piece by piece. Each province had its own 
laws and customs, its own privileges and partial exemptions 
from certain taxes. The shadows of old local governments had 
lost their power for action, but remained powerful to delay and 
obstruct united action. Voltaire (p. 409) complained that in a 
journey one changed laws as often as he changed horses. 

“A revolution requires not only abuses but also ideas.” 
In France the combustibles were ready, and so were the men 
of ideas, to apply the match. Science had upset all old ideas 
about the world outside man. The telescope had proved that 
other planets like our earth revolved around the sun, and that 
myriads of other suns whirled through boundless space. The 
English Newton had shown how this vast universe is bound 
together by unvarying “laws.” The microscope had revealed 
an undreamed-of world of minute life in air and earth and water 
all around us ; and air, earth, water (and fire) themselves had 
changed their nature. The Ancients had taught that they were 
the “original elements” out of which everything else was made 
up. But the French Lavoisier, founder of modern chemistry, 
had lately decomposed water and air into gases, and shown 
that fire was a union of one of these gases with earthy carbon. 
Tradition and authority had lost their hold in the world of 
matter: perhaps they were not always right in the world of 
human society. 

English writers, enjoying freedom of speech and of the press, 
had begun a revolt against the authority of the past; but their 



VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU 


409 


speculations were now carried much farther by French writers, 
who quickly spread their influence over all Europe. About 1750 
there began an age of dazzling brilliancy in French literature and 
scholarship . Never before had any country seen so many and 
so famous men of letters 
at one time. Of the 
scores, we can mention 
only two. 

1. Voltaire had already 
won his fame in 1750, 
and he ruled as the in¬ 
tellectual monarch of 
Europe for thirty years 
more. He came from 
the middle class. As a 
young man, he had been 
imprisoned for libel by 
a “letter of the seal”; 
and a dissipated noble, 
angered by a witticism, 
had hired a band of ruf¬ 
fians to beat him nearly 

to death. Some years Volta,re. - The bust by Houdon. 

of exile he spent in 

England, where, he says, he “learned to think.” He had 
biting satire, mocking wit, keen reasoning, and incisive, vigor¬ 
ous style. He railed at absentee bishops of licentious lives; he 
questioned the privileges of the nobles; and he exposed pit¬ 
ilessly the iniquity of the gabelle and of the “letters of the seal.” 
The church seemed to him the chief foe to human progress; 
and in his invective against its abuses he sometimes confused 
it with Christianity itself. Most of his work was destructive; 
but there was no chance to build up in Europe until much of 
the old was torn down. Voltaire’s lifelong exposure of the folly 
and wrong of religious persecution had much to do with creating 
the free atmosphere in which we live to-day. Says the American 
Lowell, “We owe half our liberty to that leering old mocker.” 



Voltaire 
and his 
associates 





410 


FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 


Rousseau 

and 

democracy 


Louis XVI 


Marie 

Antoinette 

Turgot’s 

reforms 


2. Voltaire and his fellows admired the constitutional mon¬ 
archy of England; but they looked for reform from some 
enlightened despot, rather than from free government. One 
alone among them stood for democracy. This was Rousseau. 
He wrote much that was absurd about an ideal “ state of nature ” 
before men “invented governments” ; but he taught, more force¬ 
fully than any man before him, the sovereignty of the whole 
people. His famous book (The Social Contract, 1762) opens 
with the words, “Man was born free, but he is now everywhere 
in chains” ; and it argues passionately that it is man’s right and 
duty to recover freedom. Rousseau’s moral earnestness and 
enthusiasm made his doctrine almost a religion with his 
disciples. 1 

In 1774 the dissolute but able Louis XV was succeeded by the 
well-disposed but irresolute Louis XVI. This prince had a 
vague notion of what was right and a general desire to do it, 
but he lacked moral courage and energy. The queen was Marie 
Antoinette, daughter of the great Maria Theresa of Austria. 
She was young and high-spirited but ignorant and frivolous. 

Reform began, and finally the Revolution began, because the 
royal treasury was bankrupt. Louis called to his aid Turgot, 
a successful Provincial governor already famous as a reformer. 
This officer now cut down ruthlessly the frivolous expenses of 
the court, and abolished the corvee, the remaining tolls on com¬ 
merce, and the outgrown gild system. He planned more far- 
reaching reforms — to recast the whole system of taxes so that 
the rich should pay their share, and to abolish feudal dues. 
But the courtiers grumbled, and the queen cast black looks 
upon the reformer who interfered with her gayeties; and so 
after a few months the weak king dismissed the man “ with a 
whole pacific Revolution in his head.” 

1 Some years before the French Revolution began, the ideas, and even 
some of the phrases, of Rousseau began to have a powerful influence in 
America. Rousseau, however, drew these ideas to a great extent from 
John Locke and other English writers of the seventeenth century, and we 
cannot always tell whether reference to natural equality in a document of 
the American Revolution is affected by Rousseau or directly by the older 
English literature. 



TURGOT AND NECKER 


411 


Still in 1776 Louis called to the helm Necker, a successful Necker 
banker and another reformer. Necker was not a great states¬ 
man like Turgot, but he had liberal views and a good business 
head. His difficulties, however, were tremendously augmented 
in 1778 when Louis joined America against England (p. 400). 

The new expense of this war made it plainly impossible (on the 
old plans) to pay even the interest on the national debt. Necker 
suggested sweeping reform in taxation, along Turgot’s lines; 
but the loud outcry of the nobles caused the king to dismi-ss 
him also from office (1781). Necker , however, had let the nation 
know just how it was being plundered. He had published a “ re¬ 
port” on the finances, showing who paid the taxes and how 
much, and how the revenues were wasted. This paper was read 
eagerly and angrily by the middle class. 

For a few years more the king’s ministers kept the govern¬ 
ment and the court going by borrowing unscrupulously with 
no prospect of paying. But the time came when not even the 
king’s promise could induce any one to lend. Taxes must 
yield more; and Louis learned at last the teaching of Turgot 
and Necker — that the only way to raise more money by taxes 
was to tax those who had more wherewith to pay. The privi¬ 
leged orders, however, had not learned this lesson. When the 
king begged, and finally ordered, them to give up their 
exemptions, they tried to evade the issue by arguing that the 
only authority with rightful power to impose new taxes was 
the States General. Unwittingly they had invoked a power 
that was to destroy them. The almost forgotten States Gen¬ 
eral (p. 291) had not met since 1614. Now the middle class 
took up the cry for it until the name rang through France. In 
August of 1788 the king surrendered. He recalled Necker 
and called a States General. 

For Further Reading. — Some material may be found in Rob¬ 
inson’s Readings. Of modern accounts the student should read either 
Shailer Mathews’ French Revolution, 1-110, or Robinson and Beard’s 
History of Europe, Our Own Times, chap, vii, viii. 




CHAPTER XLIII 


THE REVOLUTION IN PEACE 


Election of 
the States 
General 


One house 
or three 


For the election of the States General, the government marked 
France off into many districts. The nobles of each district 
came together and chose certain delegates from their “order”; 
the clergy did likewise; and all other taxpayers in the district 
were allowed to vote for an electoral college, which then chose 
delegates for their class — “ the third estate.” 

There had been vehement discussion as to how the Estates 
General should vote. Anciently the three orders sat in sep¬ 
arate “houses,” each having one vote. Under that arrange¬ 
ment, nobles and clergy (representing only a fraction of the 
nation) would have two thirds the power. Accordingly there 
was a loud demand from the middle class, and from liberal no¬ 
bles like Lafayette (recently returned from America), (1) that 
the third estate should have as many delegates as the other two 
orders combined, and (2) that the three estates should sit and 
act as one body. The king finally granted the “ double repre¬ 
sentation” (300 nobles, 300 clergy, 600 of the third estate); 
but at once tried to make this concession worse than useless by 
requiring the three orders to act as three separate units. 

May 5, 1789, Louis formally opened the States General at 
Versailles — the favorite royal residence, twelve miles south¬ 
west from Paris. His address made it plain that he ex¬ 
pected the estates to grant him new taxes, and promptly 
disperse. After this address the nobles and clergy with¬ 
drew from the hall (as the king desired) and “organized” as 
separate chambers; but the third estate, with skillful general¬ 
ship, insisted at first that it could not act while so many “ depu¬ 
ties of the nation ” were absent, and sent pressing invitations to 
the others to join in one assembly so as to get at work “ to save 

412 



THE STATES GENERAL 413 

France/’ This deadlock continued for many weeks. Finally 
(June 17) when further delay was plainly dangerous, the third 
estate voted that even without the “absent” delegates its mem¬ 
bers practically represented the nation. Accordingly, still in¬ 
viting the other delegates to join, it organized as a “National 
AssemblyThis was a revolution. It changed a gathering of 
feudal “ Estates ” into an assembly representing the nation as one 
whole. Nothing of this kind had ever been seen before on the con¬ 
tinent of Europe. 

Two days later, the National Assembly was joined by half 
the clergy and by a few nobles. But the next morning the 
Assembly found sentries at the doors of their hall, and carpen¬ 
ters within putting up staging, to prepare for a “ royal session. ” 
Plainly the king was about to interfere. The delegates ad¬ 
journed to a tennis court near by, and there with stern enthu¬ 
siasm they unanimously took a memorable oath never to separate 
until they had established a constitution} 

As anticipated, however, Louis summoned the three estates 
to meet him and ordered them to organize as separate bodies and 
to vote certain specified reforms. When he left the hall, the 
nobles and higher clergy followed. The new “National As¬ 
sembly” kept their seats. There was a moment of uncertainty; 
but Mirabeau, a noble who had abandoned his order, rose to 
remind the delegates of their great oath. The royal master 
of ceremonies, reentering, asked haughtily, if they had not 
heard the king’s command to disperse. “Yes,” broke in 
Mirabeau’s thunder; “but go tell your master that we are 
here by the power of the people , and that nothing but the 
power of bayonets shall drive us away.” Then, on Mira¬ 
beau’s motion, the Assembly decreed the inviolability of its 
members: “ Infamous and guilty of capital crime is any person 
or court that shall dare pursue or arrest any of them, on whose 
part soever the same be commanded.” 

The king’s vacillation prevented conflict. Paris was rising 
in arms, and when the regular troops were ordered to fire on the 

1 The idea of a written constitution had come to France from America. 


The Na¬ 
tional As¬ 
sembly ti 


The Tennis 
Court Oath, 
June 20 , 
1789 


Vacillation 
of the king 




414 


THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


Attempt at 
counter¬ 
revolution 


Fall of 
the Bastille, 
July 14 


mob, they rang their musket butts sullenly on the pavement, 
muttering, “We are the army of the Nation /” 1 The next day 
forty-seven nobles joined the Assembly, and in a week the king 
ordered the rest to do so. 

The courtiers still planned a counter-revolution, and again 
won over the weak king. To overawe the Assembly (and 
probably to seize liberal leaders) he assembled near Paris sev¬ 
eral regiments of German and Swiss mercenaries, who could be 
depended upon to obey orders. On Mirabeau’s motion the 
Assembly bluntly requested the king to remove this threat. 
Louis answered by dismissing and exiling Necker, who had op¬ 
posed the court policy. 

This was on the evening of July 11. About noon the next 
day, the news was whispered on the streets. Camille Desmou¬ 
lins, a young journalist, pistol in hand leaped upon a table in 
one of the public gardens, exclaiming, “Necker is dismissed. 
It is a signal for a St. Bartholomew' of patriots. To arms ! To 
arms!” By night the streets bristled with barricades against 
the charge of the king’s cavalry, and the crowds w r ere sacking 
gunshops for arms. Three regiments of the French Guards 
joined the rebels, and tw r o days later the revolutionary forces at¬ 
tacked the Bastille. 

The Bastille was the great “state prison” for political of¬ 
fenders and victims of “letters of the seal.” Thus it was a 
detested symbol of the “Old Regime.” It had been used as an 
arsenal, and the rebels went to it at first only to demand arms. 
Refused admission and fired upon, they made a frantic attack. 
The fortress was virtually impregnable; but after some hours of 
wild onslaught, it surrendered to an almost unarmed force, — 
“ taken,” as Carlyle says, “ like Jericho, by miraculous sound.” 
The anniversary of its destruction is still celebrated in France 
as the birthday of political liberty. 

This rising of Paris had saved the Assembly. The most hated 
of the courtiers fled from France in terror. The king visited 


1 Some of these regiments had served recently in America. Arthur Young 
(p. 408) had already declared, — “The American revolution has laid the 
foundations for another one in France.” 




PLATE LXXIV 




Above. — Fountains in the Versailles Gardens. 

Below. — The Palace of Versailles. — The palace and park (and the 
road from Paris) were built by Louis XIV at enormous expense. 

















PLATE LXXV 



Russian artist, Paul Swedomsky. 




















FALL OF THE BASTILLE 


415 



Paris, sanctioned all that had been done, sent away his troops, 
accepted the tricolor (red, white, and blue), the badge of the Rev¬ 
olution, as the national colors, and recalled Necker. 

The fall of the Bastille gave the signal for a brief mob-rule 


Fall of the Bastille. — From a drawing by Prieur. 

over all France. In towns the mobs demolished local “ bas¬ 
tilles.’ * In the country the lower peasantry and bands of vaga¬ 
bonds plundered and demolished castles. Each district had 
its carnival of plunder. The king could not restore order, be¬ 
cause the machinery of the government had collapsed; but 
everywhere the middle class organized to put down anarchy — 
and so really saved the Revolution. All over France the elec¬ 
toral colleges (p. 412) had met from time to time to keep in 
touch with their delegates or to send them instructions: and 
now, in the failure of the royal government, these representative 
bodies made themselves into local governments. Their first 
act in each district was to organize the middle-class inhabitants 
into armed patrols to restore order. (This militia became per¬ 
manent — sanctioned soon by the National Assembly as 
“ National Guards,” with Lafayette as supreme commander.) 

Meantime, on the evening of August 4, the report of a com¬ 
mittee on the disorders throughout the country had stirred the 


Local 

anarchy 


Put down 
by middle 
class organi¬ 
zation 





416 


THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


August 4: 
abolition of 
privilege 


“ March of 
the women,” 
October 5, 
1789 


Assembly deeply. A young noble, who had served in America 
with Lafayette, declared that the commotion was all due to the 
special privileges of his class, and, with impassioned oratory, he 
moved their instant abolition. One after another, in eager 
emulation, the liberal nobles followed, each proposing some sac¬ 
rifice for his order, — game laws, dovecotes, tithes, exclusive 
right to military office, and a mass of sinecures and pensions, — 
and each proposal was promptly voted, with enthusiastic 
applause. The work was done hastily, but it was noble and 
necessary, and it has never been undone. August 4 ended feudal¬ 
ism and established legal equality in France. (This removal 
of abuses was one reason why anarchy was so easily suppressed.) 

After these fruitful three months (May 5-August 4, 1789), 
the Assembly spent two years more in revolutionizing France 
and in drawing up a new constitution. Once more only it was 
endangered by the king. Early in October he again collected 
troops near Versailles, and at a military banquet (it was re¬ 
ported) young officers, to win the favor of court ladies, trampled 
upon the tricolor. The Paris mob (still loyal to the king) began 
to demand that Louis should come to Paris, to be near the 
Assembly and away from evil counselors. On* 1 ' riotous ex¬ 
pedition to bring him to the^ capital was turned back by the 
National Guards; but thousands of the women of the market 
place then set out on a like attempt, in a wild, hungry, 1 haggard 
rout, followed by the riffraff of the city. 

Lafayette permitted the movement to go on, until there 
came near being a terrible massacre at Versailles; but his tardy 
arrival, late at night, with twenty thousand National Guards, 
restored order. The king yielded to the demands of the 
crowd and to the advice of Lafayette; and the same day a 
strange procession escorted the royal family to Paris, — the 
mob dancing in wild joy along the road before the royal car¬ 
riage, carrying on pikes the heads of some slain soldiers, and 

1 France was in the grip of famine when the States General met — due 
to a succession of poor harvests; and the general confusion had prevented 
a rapid recovery. 



MARCH OF THE WOMEN 


417 


shouting jocularly, “Now we shall have bread, for we are 
bringing the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s, little 
boy.” 

The king’s brothers and some 150,000 nobles fled from 
France, — and soon were trying in foreign lands to stir up 
war against their country. Nearly a fourth of the Assembly, 
too, withdrew, declaring that that body was no longer free. 
And it is true that from this time mobs in the galleries and 
in the streets did frequently intimidate conservative speak¬ 
ers. During the rest of its life, danger to the Assembly came 
from this source, not from the court. 

One man in the Assembly never hesitated to oppose the mob, 
and often won it to his side. Mirabeau was the great man of 
the National x\ssembly. He was a profound statesman, with 
marvelous oratory and dauntless courage. (Unhappily his 
arrogance made him enemies among close associates: both 
Necker and Lafayette hated him.) Mirabeau thought the 
revolution had gone far enough, and he wished to preserve the 
remaining royal power so as to prevent anarchy. He urged the 
king to accept the new constitution in good faith and to sur¬ 
round himself with a liberal ministry acceptable to the Assembly. 
Indeed, as the mob grew more and more violent, Mirabeau 
wished Louis to leave Paris (where he was practically a prisoner) 
and appeal to the country provinces against the capital. But 
while the king hesitated, Mirabeau died suddenly, broken down 
by work and dissolute living. 

Then Louis decided to flee, not to French provinces, but to 
Austria , to raise war against the reforms of the Revolution. The 
plot failed. The royal family did get out of Paris (Louis dis¬ 
guised as a valet), but, through the king’s indecision, they were 
recognized and brought back. Then followed another popular 
rising — with much excuse — to induce the Assembly to dethrone 
the king and set up a republic. Crowds of workingmen with 
women and children flocked out to the Champs de Mars (an open 
space near the city where the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille 
had just been celebrated) to sign a petition for this action. The 
municipal authorities forbade the gathering; and finally La- 


The 

“Emigrant” 

nobles 


Mirabeau 


Attempted 
escape of 
the king 


Massacre of 
the Champs 
de Mars, 
July 17, 

1791 




418 


THE, FRENCH REVOLUTION 


fayette’s National Guards dispersed the jeering but unarmed 
mob \^ith deadly volleys. 

This massacre marks a sharp division between the working 
class and the middle class. For the time, the latter carried the 
day. September 14, 1791, Louis took a solemn oath to uphold 
the new constitution, and was’restored to power. 


The Consti¬ 
tution of 

1791 


A constitu¬ 
tional mon¬ 
archy under 
middle-class 
control 


The Constitution of 1791 opened with a noble “Declaration 
of the Rights of Man” — suggested no doubt by the Bills of 
Rights in some of the American state constitutions. It pro¬ 
claimed: (1) “Men are born equal in rights, and remain so”; 

(2) “Law is the expression of the will of all the people; every 
citizen has a right to share in making it; and it must be the same 
for all.” And so on, through a number of provisions. French¬ 
men were declared equal before the law, and equally eligible to 
public office. Hereditary titles and all special privileges were 
abolished. Jury trial, freedom of religion, and freedom of the 
press were established. The great Declaration has justified the 
boast of the Assembly — that it “ shall serve as an everlasting 
war cry against oppressors.” 

The Declaration of Rights cared for personal liberties. The 
arrangements concerning the government secured a very large 
amount of political liberty. (1) The Central government was made 
to consist of the king and a Legislative Assembly of one House 
elected anew once in two years. The king could not dissolve the 
Assembly, and his veto could be overridden if three successive leg¬ 
islatures so decided. (2) For local government, the historic “prov¬ 
inces,” with their troublesome peculiar privileges, were swept 
away. France was divided into 83 “ departments ” of nearly 
equal size. Each “department,” and each of the “communes” 
(villages or towns) of which it was made up, chose a council 
and an executive with fairly complete control over local affairs. 

(3) The franchise was given to all taxpayers, but the higher 
elective offices were open only to men of considerable wealth. 
This device of graded property qualifications secured control to 
the middle class. (The same device was common in America. 
None of the states then had manhood suffrage.) 




THE CONSTITUTION OF 1791 


419 


Church and state had always been united in France, and they 
were now made even more so. The government assumed the 
duty of paying the clergy and keeping up the churches, and 
clergy of all grades were made elective. Unfortunately they were 
required to take an oath of fidelity to the constitution in a form 
repulsive to many sincere Catholics. Only four of the old bishops 
took the oath; and two thirds of the parish priests, including 
the most sincere and conscientious among them, were driven 
into opposition to the Revolution. The greatest error of the 
Assembly was in arraying religion against patriotism. 

Great good, however, followed from one other feature of this 
arrangement. The nation took possession of the church lands 
— one fifth of all France — and sold them. In the outcome, the 
lands passed in small parcels into the hands of the peasantry 
and the middle class, and so laid the foundation for future pros¬ 
perity. France became a land of small farmers, and the peas¬ 
antry rose to a higher standard of comfort than such a class in 
Europe had ever known. 

Exercise. — 1. Point out both direct and indirect ways in which 
the American Revolution helped prepare for the French Revolution. 
2 . Compare the methods of the middle class and the nobles of France 
in 1789 with those of corresponding classes in Russia in 1917. 3. Com¬ 

pare the “suspensive” veto (p. 418) with the American plan of getting 
rid of the old “absolute” veto. Which plan is in use to-day in the most 
free governments ? 4. Can the franchise provision of the Constitution 

of 1791 be reconciled with the Declaration of Rights? 

For Further Reading. — A good one-volume history of the 
Revolution is that by Shailer Mathews. Another is R. M. Johnston’s 
The French Revolution, A Short History. There are excellent treatments 
in H. Morse Stephens’ Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815, and in Rose’s 
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era. The best of the larger works in Eng¬ 
lish is H. Morse Stephens’ History of the French Revolution. Carlyle’s 
French Revolution remains the most powerful and vivid presentation, 
but it can be used to best advantage after some preliminary study upon 
the age. Among the biographies, the following are especially good: 
Belloc’s Danton, Willert’s Mirabeau, Blind’s Madam, Roland, and Mor- 
ley’s Robespierre (in Miscellanies, I). For fiction, Dickens’ Tale of 
Two Cities and Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three are notable. Anderson’s 
Constitutions and Documents contains interesting source material, like the 
Tennis Court Oath and many of the “decrees” referred to in this book. 


Church 
and state 


Peasant 

land-owners 








CHAPTER XLIV 


The Legisla¬ 
tive Assem¬ 
bly, Sep¬ 
tember of 

1791 to 
April of 

1792 


Constitu¬ 

tionalists 


% 


Girondists 

and 

Jacobins 


Marat, Dan- 
ton, Robes¬ 
pierre 


THE REVOLUTION IN WAR TIME 

As the constitution directed, France at once chose a Legisla¬ 
tive Assembly (September, 1791) of nearly 750 members. The 
great bulk of the nation had accepted the Revolution enthusi¬ 
astically ; but they considered it over, and they had not learned 
the need of ceaseless vigilance in politics. A very large part 
therefore took no part in the election. At first, however, about 
two thirds the delegates seemed to represent this part of the 
nation. Their leaders were known as Constitutionalists (support¬ 
ers of the constitution as it stood). Outside 1 the Assembly, this 
party was led by Lafayette, now the most influential man in 
France. 

A small minority of the nation would have preferred a more 
liberal constitution — with manhood franchise and perhaps a 
republican goverAment. These few “radicals” won a third of 
the seats in the Assembly because of their organization in 
“Jacobin” clubs. 2 (No other party had any organization 
whatever.) The most prominent leaders of this group were 
called the Girondists (because several of them came from the 
Gironde Department). They were hot-headed, eloquent young 
men given to lofty speaking of fine sentiments, but not fit for 
swift and decisive action. 

One small section of extreme Jacobins — only about a dozen, 
known as the Mountain because of their elevated seats at one 
side of the gathering — held men of a different stamp. Here 
sat Marat and Danton. Marat was a physician of eminence, 

1 The old Assembly had generously but unwisely made its delegates in¬ 
eligible to the following one. Thus the Legislative Assembly was made up 
of inexperienced men. 

2 A radical club which sprang up in Paris in the fall of 1789 took this name 
from its meeting place. Soon it established/daughter societies in other 
cities, and kept up close correspondence with them on political matters. 
These daughter clubs showed a disciplined obedience to the mother society. 

420 



GIRONDISTS AND JACOBINS 


421 


with a sincere pity for the poor. He was jealous and suspicious, 
however, and became half-crazed under the strain of the Rev¬ 
olution. As early as 1789 his paper (“The Friend of the Peo¬ 
ple ”) began to preach assassination of aristocrats. Danton 
was a lawyer of Paris. He became prominent early in the Jaco¬ 
bin clubs, and his rude eloquence and his control over the mob 
won him the name “ the Mirabeau of the Market Place/’ He 
was a man of rugged and forceful nature and a born leader — with 
little patience for the fine speechifying of the Girondists where 
deeds were needed. 

Outside the Assembly there was a third leader of this radical 
group. Before the Revolution, Robespierre had been a precise 
young lawyer in a provincial town. He had risen to a judge- 
ship — the highest position he could ever expect to attain — but 
he had resigned his office because he had conscientious scruples 
against imposing a death penalty upon a criminal. He was an 
enthusiastic disciple of Rousseau. He was narrow, dull, em 
vious, pedantic; but logical, incorruptible, sincere. In tne 
preceding Assembly, Mirabeau had said of him, — “ That man 
is dangerous; he 'will go far; he believes every word he says” 

The new Assembly, still with tremendous problems at home 
to solve, found itself at once threatened with foreign war. The 
emigrant nobles (p. 417), breathing vengeance, were gathering on 
the Rhine frontier under the protection of German princes, rais¬ 
ing and drilling mercenary troops. They had secret sympathi¬ 
zers within France; and in the early winter a treasonable plot to 
betray to them the key to France, the great fortress of Strass- 
burg, all but succeeded. The danger was real. The Assembly 
sternly and promptly condemned to death all Emigrants who 
should not return to France before a certain date; but the king 
vetoed the decree. 

Moreover, the king’s brother-in-law, the Emperor Leopold, 
had already sent to the sovereigns of Europe a circular note, call¬ 
ing for common action against the Revolution, inasmuch as the 
cause of Louis was “ the cause of kings” The Revolution stood 
for a new social order. Its cause was “the cause of peo- 


Robespierre 


Foreign 

perils 


The Revolu¬ 
tion and 
European 
kings 




422 


THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


The Assem¬ 
bly accepts 
war 


The king’s 
vetoes 


France 
girdled 
with foes 


Brunswick’s 

Proclama¬ 

tion: 

July 25 


pies”; and the kings felt that they must crush it before it 
spread. 

The Legislative Assembly properly demanded of Leopold that 
he disperse the armies of the Emigrants and that he apologize 
for his statements. Leopold replied with a counter-demand for 
a change in the French government such as to secure Europe 
against the spread of revolution. This insolent attempt of a 
foreign potentate to dictate the policy of the French people 
aroused a natural tempest of scorn and wrath; and (April, 1792) 
France declared war. 

The French levies at once invaded Belgium (then an Austrian 
province, p. 394), but were rolled back in defeat. The German 
powers, however, were busy robbing Poland (p. 402), and a few 
weeks more for preparation were given France. During these 
weeks, the Assembly decreed the banishment of all priests who 
refused to take the oath to the constitution (many of wdiom were 
spies), and it provided for a camp of twenty thousand chosen 
patriots to guard the capital. Louis vetoed both Acts. By June, 
France was girdled with foes. The Empire, Prussia, and Savoy 
(a powerful state in North Italy) were in arms. Naples and 
Spain were soon to join. Sweden and Russia both offered to do 
so, if they were needed. In July a Prussian army, commanded 
by old officers of Frederick the Great, crossed the frontier; and 
two Austrian armies, one from the Netherlands and one from the 
upper Rhine, converged upon the same line of invasion. The 
French troops were outnumbered three to one. Worse still, the 
army was demoralized by the resignation of many officers in the 
face of the enemy, and still more by a justifiable suspicion that 
many of those remaining sympathized with the invaders. 
Within France, too, were royalist risings and plots; and the king 
was using his veto to prevent effective resistance. The queen 
— whom the Paris mob now styled “the Austrian Woman” — 
had even betrayed the French plan of campaign. 

Brunswick, the Prussian commander, counted upon a holiday 
march to Paris. July 25 he issued a famous proclamation declar¬ 
ing (1) that the allies entered France to restore Louis to his place, 
(2) that all men taken with arms in their hands should be hanged, 


AND “THE CAUSE OF KINGS” 


423 


and (3) that, if Louis were injured, he would “inflict a memo¬ 
rable vengeance ” by delivering up Paris to military execu¬ 
tion. 

This bluster, with its threat of Prussian “frightfulness,” was 
fatal to the king. France rose in rage. But before the new 
troops marched to the front, they insisted upon guarding against 
enemies in the rear. Louis must not be left free to paralyze ac¬ 
tion, again, at some critical moment, by his veto. Constitution¬ 
alists and Girondists alike stood by the king, but the Jacobin 
radicals carried their point by insurrection. Led by Danton, 
they forcibly displaced the middle-class municipal council of 
Paris with a new government; and this “Commune of Paris” 
prepared an attack upon the Tuileries for August 1 0 . After con¬ 
fusing his guards with contradictory orders, the king and his 
family fled to the Assembly, leaving the faithful Swiss regiment 
to be massacred. Bloody from this slaughter, the rebels forced 
their way into the hall of the Assembly. Two thirds of the dep¬ 
uties had fled, and the “rump” of Girondists and Jacobins now 
decreed the deposition of Louis, and the immediate election, by 
manhood suffrage, of a Convention to frame a new government. 
Lafayette (commander of the French army on the Rhine) tried 
to lead his troops against Paris to restore the king. He found 
his army ready, instead, to arrest him ; and so he fled to the Aus¬ 
trians — by whom he was cast into prison, to remain there until 
freed years later by Napoleon’s victories. 

The rising of August 10 had been caused by the fear of foreign 
invasion and of treason at home. Three weeks later the same 
causes led to one of the most terrible events in history. The 
“Commune of Paris,” under Danton’s leadership, had packed 
the prisons with three thousand “suspected” aristocrats. Then 
came the terrifying news of the shameful surrender of Longwy 
and Verdun, — two great frontier fortresses guarding the road 
to Paris. The new Paris volunteers hesitated to go to the front, 
lest the numerous prisoners recently arrested should now break 
out and avenge themselves upon the city. So, while Danton 
was hurrying recruits to meet Brunswick, the frenzied mob at¬ 
tacked the prisons, organized rude lynch courts, and on Sep- 


August io: 

Louis 

deposed 


Surrender 
of Verdun 


And the 
“ September 
Massacres ” 


424 


THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


Excused 
by the 
Jacobins 


France “ at 
war with 
kings ” 


The Revolu¬ 
tionary 
propaganda 


tember 2, 3, and 4, massacred a thousand of the prisoners with 
only the shadow of a trial. 

Whether the Jacobin leaders had a secret hand in starting 
these atrocious executions, we are not sure. Certainly they did 
not try to stop them ; but neither did any other body of persons. 
Says Carlyle : “ Very desirable indeed that Paris had interfered, 
yet not unnatural that it stood looking on in stupor. Paris is 
in death-panic . . . gibbets at its door. Whosoever in Paris 
hath heart to front death finds it more pressing to do so fighting 
the Prussians than fighting the slayers of aristocrats.” The 
Jacobins, however, did openly accept the massacres, when 
committed, as a useful means of terrifying the royalist 
plotters. When the Assembly talked of punishment, Danton 
excused the deed. “It was necessary to make our enemies 
afraid,” he cried. “. . . Blast my memory, but let France be 
free.” 

Freed from internal peril, France turned upon her foes splen¬ 
didly. September 20 the advancing Prussians were checked at 
Valmy; and November 9 the victory of Jemmapes, the first real 
pitched battle of the war, opened the Austrian Netherlands to 
French conquest. Another French army had already entered 
Germany, and a third had occupied ^Nice and Savoy. These 
successes of raw French volunteers over the veterans of Europe 
called forth an orgy of democratic enthusiasm. The new Na¬ 
tional Convention (September 21, 1792) became at once, in 
Danton’s phrase, “a general committee of insurrection for all 
nations.” It ordered a manifesto in all languages, offering the 
alliance of the French nation to all peoples who wished to recover 
their liberties; and French generals, entering a foreign country, 
were ordered “ to abolish serfdom, nobility, and all monopolies and 
privileges, and to aid in setting up a new government upon principles 
of popular sovereignty .” One fiery orator flamed out, — “Des¬ 
pots march against us with fire and sword. We will bear 
against them Liberty!” 

Starving and ragged, but welcomed by the invaded peoples, the 
French armies sowed over Europe the seed of civil and political 
liberty. The Revolution was no longer merely French. It took 


PLATE LXXVI 



duget de Lisle Singing the Marseillaise for the first time before the Mayor of Strassburg, 
at whose suggestion the young officer had just composed this greatest of all war songs (words and 
music) for the Strassburg volunteers (1792). The name comes from the accident that in Paris 
(which soon went wild over the song) it was sung first by a band of six hundred young volunteers 
just arrived from Marseilles. 





















AT WAR WITH EUROPE 


425 


on the zeal of a proselyting religion, and spread its principles by 
fire and sword. 

France at large had not willed the deposition of Louis, 
but it now ratified that deed. When the new Convention met, 
the Constitutionalist party had disappeared. The great ma¬ 
jority of the delegates were followers of the Girondists; but 
on the Mountain sat Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, with a 
somewhat larger following than before. On its first afternoon the 
Convention declared monarchy abolished, and enthusiastically 
established “The French Republic, One and Indivisible.” 

The radicals were bent also upon punishing Louis. They 
were convinced of his treason, and they wished to make recon¬ 
ciliation with the old order of things impossible. Said Danton : 
“ The allied kings march against us. Let us hurl at their feet, 
as the gage of battle, the head of a king.” The Girondists 
wdshed to save Louis’ life, but they were intimidated by the gal¬ 
leries ; and “ Louis Capet” was condemned to death for “ treason 
to the nation.” 

Then the Convention proposed a new written constitution 
for the Republic. This document was extremely democratic. It 
swept away all the checks of indirect elections and property qual¬ 
ifications, and made all citizens “ equally sovereign.” Further, it 
made all acts of the legislature subject to a “ referendum.” This 
Constitution of the Year 1 1 was itself submitted to such a referen¬ 
dum, and was adopted by the nation. No country had ever had 
so democratic a constitution. Nor had any great nation ever 
before adopted its government by direct vote of the people. 

The constitution, however, never went into operation. The Con¬ 
vention suspended it, declaring that France was in danger, and 
that the government must be left free from constitutional checks 
until war was over. (This was one of the first demonstrations 
in history of the fundamental truth that war is a despot’s game, 
and that democracies can play it successfully only by ceasing, 
for the time being, to be democracies.) 

1 The Convention established for the time a new Revolutionary calendar. 


The First 

French 

Republic 


Execution of 
the king 


Constitution 
of the 
Year I 



426 


THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


Treason and 
dissension 


The Giron 
dists give 
way to the 
Jacobins 


Gironde 
rebellion 
and foreign 
invasion 


France was indeed in danger. The execution of the king was 
one factor in deciding England, Spain, Holland, Naples, and 
Portugal to join the war against France, and it offended many 
French patriots. Dumouriez, an able but unscrupulous gen¬ 
eral, who had succeeded Lafayette as the chief military leader, 
tried to play traitor, in the spring of 1793, by surrendering Bel¬ 
gian fortresses to the Austrians and by leading his army to Paris 
to restore the monarchy. His troops refused to follow him, and 
he fled to the enemy; but Belgium was lost for a time and once 
more the frontier was open to attack. 

Ever since the Convention met, dissension had threatened 
between the Gironde majority and the Mountain. The Moun¬ 
tain was supported by the masses of Paris; but, outside the cap¬ 
ital, the Girondists were much the stronger, and they now took 
the moment of foreign danger to press the quarrel to a head. 
They accused Marat of stirring up the September massacres, and 
persuaded the Convention to order his trial. Then they were 
mad enough to charge Danton with royalist conspiracy. 

Danton, who was straining his mighty strength to send re¬ 
inforcements to the front, pleaded at first for union; but, when 
this proved vain, he turned savagely upon his assailants. “ You 
were right,” he cried to his friends on the Mountain. “There 
is no peace possible with these men. Let it be war, then. They 
will not save the Republic with us. It shall be saved without 
them; saved in spite of them.” 

And while the Girondists debated, the Mountain acted. It 
was weak in the Convention, but it was supreme in the galleries 
and in the streets and in the Commune of Paris. The Commune, 
which had carried the Revolution of August 10 against the Leg¬ 
islative Assembly, now marched its forces against the Con¬ 
vention (June 2,1793) and held it prisoner until it passed a decree 
imprisoning thirty of the leading Girondists. Others of that 
party fled, and the Jacobin Mountain was left in power. 

Fugitive Girondists now aroused the provinces against the 
Jacobin capital, and gathered armies at Marseilles, Bordeaux, 
Caen. Lyons, the second city in France, even raised the white 
flag of the monarchy, and opened its gates to an Austrian army; 


THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY 427 


and the great port of Toulon admitted an English fleet. Else¬ 
where, too, royalist revolt reared its head. Especially in the 
remote province of Vendee (in ancient Brittany), the simple, 
backward peasants were still slavishly devoted to king, priest, 
and hereditary lord, and they rose now in wild rebellion against 
the Republic. The Convention, with Paris and a score of the 
central Departments, faced the other three fourths of France 
as well as the rest of Europe. 

So far, the Revolutionists had been afraid of a real executive, 
as a danger to freedom; but these new perils forced the Con¬ 
vention to intrust power to a despotic “Committee of Public 
Safety,” with twelve members, — all from the Mountain. The 
Convention made all other national committees and offi¬ 
cers the servants of this great Committee, and ordered even 
the municipal officials over France to give it implicit obe¬ 
dience. 

The Committee were not trained administrators, but they 
were men of practical business sagacitj" and of tremendous en- 
ergy, — such men as revolutions often finally toss to the top. 
In the war office, Carnot “organized victory”; beside him, in 
the treasury, labored Cambon, with his stern motto, “ War to the 
manorhouse: peace to the hut” ; while a group of such men as 
Robespierre and St. Just sought to direct the Revolution so as to 
refashion France according to new ideals of democracy and of 
welfare for the common man. 

Nearly a hundred “Deputies on Mission” were sent out from 
the Convention to all parts of France to enforce obedience to 
the Committee. They reported every ten days to the Com¬ 
mittee; but, subject to its approval, they exercised despotic 
power, — replacing civil authorities at will, seizing money or 
supplies for the national use, imprisoning and condemning to 
death. Never has a despotism been more efficient. In October 
Lyons was captured and ordered razed to the ground. Toulon was 
taken, despite English aid, and punished sternly. Other centers 
of revolt, paralyzed with fear, yielded. Order and union were 
restored. Before the year closed, French armies had taken the 
offensive once more on all frontiers. 


And the 
Committee 
of Public 
Safety 


Order, 
union, and 
victory 




428 


THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


The “ Long 
Terror ” 


Violence 
only an inci¬ 
dent due to 
foreign peril 


Positive 

reform 


To secure this union, the Committee had used terrible means. 
Early in September of 1793 it adopted “ Terror” as a deliberate 
policy. This “Long Terror” was a very different thing from 
the “Short Terror” of the mob, a year before. The Paris pris¬ 
ons were crowded again with “Suspects”; and each day the 
Revolutionary tribunal, after farcical trials, sent batches of 
them to the guillotine. 1 Among the victims were the queen, 
many aristocrats, and also many Constitutionalists and Gi¬ 
rondists— heroes of 1791 and 1792. In some of the revolted 
districts, too, submission was followed by horrible executions; 
and at Nantes the cruelty of Carrier, the Deputy on Mission, 
half-crazed with blood, inflicted upon the Revolution an indelible 
stain. Over much of France, to be sure, the Terror was only a 
name, and the rule of the Deputies on Mission was supported 
ardently by the people. Still, in all, some fifteen thousand 
executions took place during the fourteen months of the Terror 
— one of many horrible blots on human history. 

At the same time, this bloodshed is not the significant thing 
about the Revolution. Indeed it was not the product of the 
Revolution itself, but of foreign war. Literature has been filled 
with hysterics about it. It is well for us to shudder — but there 
is no danger that we shall not, for those who suffered were the 
few who “knew how to shriek.” The danger is that we forget 
the relief to the dumb multitudes who had endured worse tortures 
for centuries. And if the Convention destroyed much, it built 
up vastly more. The grim, silent, tense-browed men of the 
Committee worked eighteen hours out of every twenty-four. 
Daily, they carried their lives in their hands; and so they worked 
swiftly and ruthlessly. But while Carnot, “Organizer of Vic¬ 
tory,” was creating the splendid army that saved liberty from 
despots, his associates were laying the foundations for a new 
and better society. Mainly on their proposals, the Convention 
made satisfactory provision for the public debt that had crushed 
the old monarchy. It adopted the beginning of a simple and 

1 Just before the Revolution a humane Dr. Guillotin had invented a new 
device to behead criminals — a heavy knife sliding down swiftly between 
upright supports. This “guillotine” was much more merciful than the 
older practice of beheading with an ax in a headsman’s hands. 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 


429 


just code of laws. It abolished imprisonment for debt and gave 
property rights to women, forty years ahead of England or Amer¬ 
ica. It accepted the metric system of weights and measures, 
abolished slavery in French colonies, instituted the first Normal 
School, the Polytechnic School of France, the Conservatory of 
France, the famous Institute of France, and the National Li¬ 
brary, and planned also a comprehensive system of public in¬ 
struction, 1 the improvement of the hospitals and of the prisons, 
and the reform of youthful criminals. 

But now the Jacobins broke into factions. 

1. The Paris Commune closed all Christian worship in the 
capital, substituting a ribald “worship of reason.” These ex¬ 
tremists were led by the coarse Hebert, who clamored for more 
blood — wholesale execution of all defenders of private prop¬ 
erty. Robespierre denounced Hebert — who then tried once 
more to raise the Paris mob against the Assembly. This time the 
Assembly won; and Robespierre sent Hebert and his friends 
to the guillotine (March, 1794). 

2 . At the other extreme, Danton had been urging for months 
that the Terror was no longer needed in a victorious and 
tranquil France. In April, Robespierre accused him of con¬ 
spiracy and sent him to the guillotine. 

For the next three months, Robespierre seemed sole master. 
He reopened the churches, and offset Hebert’s Festival of Reason 
by making the Convention celebrate a solemn “Festival of the 
Supreme Being.” 2 

Then he hurried his plans to create a new France — which he 
imagined could be done quickly by education. “We must en¬ 
tirely refashion a people whom we wish to make free,” said his 
decree, — “ destroy its prejudices, alter its habits, root up its 
vices, purify its desires. The state, therefore, must lay hold of 
every human being at its birth and direct its education with 
powerful hand.” One of his ardent disciples exclaimed that he 

1 Said Condorcet, “Next to bread, education is the first need of the peo¬ 
ple.” 

2 Robespierre was not a Christian, but a deist, like Voltaire: that is, he 
believed in an all-good creator revealed in nature. 


Jacobin 
factions 
devour one 
another 


Robes¬ 

pierre’s 

dictatorship 


430 


THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 


And his fall 


The 

Directory, 

1795-1799 


“ A whiff of 
grapeshot” 


would blow out his own brains at once if he did not believe it pos¬ 
sible by “a school of the nation” to remodel the French people 
so that it should possess “ the happiness of virtue, of moderation, 
of comfort — the happiness that springs from the enjoyment of 
the necessary without the superfluous. . . . The luxury of a 
cabin and of a field tilled by your own hands, a cart, a thatched 
roof, — such is happiness.” 

To clear the ground for putting these fine theories into prac¬ 
tice, Robespierre intensified the Terror, until the number of 
executions rose to two hundred a week in Paris. Leaders in the 
Convention trembled for their own safety, and at last they 
turned savagely upon the monster. On July 27, 1794, when 
Robespierre rose to speak, he was greeted by cries of “Down 
with the tyrant! ” Astounded, he stammered confusedly; and 
a delegate cried, — “ See, the blood of Danton chokes him ! ” 
Quickly he was tried and guillotined, with a hundred adherents. 

The Terror now ended, and in the following March (1795) the 
survivors of the delegates expelled two years before were re¬ 
admitted to the Convention. The populace was disarmed, and 
the National Guards were reorganized, to consist again of the 
propertied classes only. The restored middle-class supremacy 
was then confirmed by a new “Constitution of the Year III.” 
The government so established is called The Directory. This 
was the name of the new executive of the Republic, — a com¬ 
mittee of five, chosen by the legislature. The legislature became 
a two-house body, elected by voters with property qualifica¬ 
tions. 

A popular vote ratified this constitution; but, at the last mo¬ 
ment, the Convention decreed that two thirds of its members 
sit in the new legislature without submitting to reelection. Se¬ 
cret royalists took advantage of this unpopular act to stir up 
the Paris mob against the government, and the revolt was 
joined even by 20,000 National Guards. The Directory was 
in panic. But it had four thousand regular troops, and it hap¬ 
pened to hit upon a brilliant young officer to command them. 
That officer posted cannon about the approaches to the Conven- 



ROBESPIERRE’S RULE AND PALL 


431 


tion hall, and mowed down the attacking columns with “a 
whiff of grapeshot” (October 5, 1795). 

The Directory remained in power four years more; but the 
chief interest for this period centers in the rise of the officer who 
had saved it, — and whose name was Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Exercise. — Discuss parallels and contrasts between the course of 
the French Revolution and that of the Russian Revolution of 1917. 
Do you recall any event in English history similar to the self-perpetu¬ 
ating act of the Convention at its close? 











CHAPTER XLV 


Expansion 

before 

Bonaparte 


Bonaparte 
in Italy 


BONAPARTE AND THE CONSULATE, 1795-1804 

France had already made great gains of territory. On the 
northeast, Belgium had been annexed , with the vote of its people. 
Nice and Savoy, on the southeast, had been added, in like manner. 
The eastern frontier had been moved to the Rhine. Holland had 
been converted into a dependent ally as the “ Batavian Repub¬ 
lic,’’ with a constitution modeled on that of France. Prussia, 
Spain, and most of the small states had withdrawn from the 
war. Only England, Austria, and Sardinia kept the field. 

The Directory determined to attack Austria vigorously. Two 
splendid armies were sent into Germany, and a small, ill-supplied 
force in Italy was put under the command of Bonaparte. The 
genius of the young general (then twenty-seven years old) made 
the Italian campaign the decisive factor in the war. By swift 
marches he separated his enemies, won battle after battle, and 
by July was master of Italy. During the next year four fresh 
Austrian armies, each larger than Bonaparte’s, were sent across 
the Alps, only to meet destruction at his hands; and in 1797 
he dictated the Peace of Gampo Formio, which for a time closed 
the war on the continent. 

To the Italians, Bonaparte posed at first as a deliverer, with 
magnificent promises of a free national life. He did sweep away 
serfdom, and, in place of old oligarchic states, set up some “ re¬ 
publics”; but at the same time he perfidiously tricked the 
ancient state of Venice into war, and afterward coolly traded it 
away to Austria. Upon even the most friendly states, too, he 
levied huge contributions for the coffers of France and the 
private pockets of the Directory and to enrich his soldiers. 
Works of art, too, and choice manuscripts he ravished from Italian 
libraries and galleries, and sent to Paris, to gratify French vanity ; 
and when the Italians rose against this spoliation, he stamped 
out the revolts with deliberate “ frightfulness.” 

432 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


433 



The Italian campaigns first showed Napoleon Bonaparte to 
the world. He was an Italian, — born in Corsica in 1769. In 
that same year, Corsica became a possession of France. The 
boy passed through a French military school, and when the 
Revolution began he was a junior lieutenant of artillery. The 
war gave him opportunity. 

He had distinguished him¬ 
self at the capture of 
Toulon (p. 427); and his 
brilliant defense of the 
Directory against the 
rising of 1795 won him 
the command of the 
“ Army of Italy.” 

Bonaparte was one of 
the three or four supreme 
military geniuses of his¬ 
tory. He was also one of 
the greatest of civil rulers. 

He had profound insight, 
a marvelous memory, and 
tireless energy. He was a 
“terrible worker,” with 
wonderful grasp of details, 

— so that he could recall 
the smallest features of 
geography where a cam¬ 
paign was to take place, 
or could name the man 
best suited for office in any one of a multitude of obscure 
towns. He was not insensible to generous feeling; but, like 
Frederick II of Prussia, he was utterly unscrupulous and deliber¬ 
ately rejected all claims of morality. “Morality,” said he, 
“has nothing to do with such a man as I am.” Perfidy and 
cruelty, when they suited his ends, he used as calmly as appeals 
to honor and patriotism. 

His generalship lay largely in unprecedented rapidity of move- 


Bonaparte at Arcola. — The French 
troops were breaking at a critical point, 
when the young general forced his way 
to the front, caught a falling standard, 
and by his presence, restored the for¬ 
tune of the day. After the painting 
by Gros. 


Character of 

Napoleon 

Bonaparte 




434 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


ment, and in massing his troops against some one weak point of 
an enemy. “Our general,” said his soldiers, “wins his victories 
with our legs.” In early life he may have been a sincere re¬ 
publican ; but he hated anarchy and disorder, and, before his 
campaign in Italy was over, he had begun to plan to make him¬ 
self ruler of France. He worked systematically to transform 
the French people’s earlier ardor for liberty into a passion for 
military glory and plunder. 


Bonaparte 
in Egypt ^ 


Escape to 
France 



England alone continued the war against France; and in 
1798 Bonaparte persuaded the Directory to let him attack 

Egypt, as a step toward 
attacking England in 
India. He won a series 
of brilliant battles in 
Egypt; but suddenly his 
fleet was annihilated by 
the English under Nelson, 
in the Battle of the Nile, 
and his gorgeous dreams 
of Oriental empire faded 
away. 

Without hesitation 
Bonaparte deserted his 
doomed army, and es¬ 
caped to France, where 
he saw new opportuni¬ 
ties. War on the con¬ 
tinent had been renewed. 
In 1798 England had 
succeeded in drawing 
Russia and Austria into 
another coalition; and 
so far, in the new war, the campaigns had gone .against France. 
Bonaparte’s failure in distant Egypt was not comprehended, 
and the French people welcomed him as a savior. 

Moreover, the Directory had proven disgracefully corrupt 


Bonaparte Dissolves the French As¬ 
sembly. — From a contemporary print. 























<6 


o 

_o 


Lo 

o 


L o 


X 


o 








































THE CONSULATE 


435 


Each of three years in succession —1797, 1798, 1799 — the 
elections had gone against it; but it had kept itself in power 
by a series of coups d’etat , or arbitrary interferences with the 
result of the voting. Now Bonaparte used a coup d’etat 1 against 
it. His troops purged the legislature of members hostile to 
his plan; and a Rump, made up of Bonaparte’s adherents, abol¬ 
ished the Directory and elected Bonaparte and two others as 
consuls , intrusting to them the preparation of a new consti¬ 
tution. “Now,” said the peasantry, “we shall have peace, 
thanks to God and to Bonaparte”; and by a vote of some 
three million to fifteen hundred, the French people accepted 
the constitution that virtually made Bonaparte dictator. 

Bonaparte’s first work as consul was to crush foreign foes. 
In 1800 he won a dazzling victory over the Austrians at Marengo 
in Italy, and General Moreau crushed another Austrian army 
at Ilohenlinden in Bavaria. One by one the allies laid down 
their arms, and in 1802 the Peace of Amiens won peace even 
from England — which had been in arms against France since 
1793. 

By the “Constitution of the Year VIII” (1800) Napoleon, as 
First Consul, was really a dictator. The legislature was little 
more than a debating society, and could not even propose a law 
without his consent. The government was said to “ rest on man¬ 
hood suffrage,” but only as “ refined by successive filtrations.” 
The 5,000,000 adult male citizens chose 500,000 “Communal 
Notables”; these chose 50,000 “Departmental Notables”; 
and these chose 5000 “National Notables.” But all these 
elections elected nobody. The executive was to appoint com¬ 
munal officers from the 500,000, departmental officers from the 
50,000, and members of the legislature from the 5000. 

Thus local administration was once more highly centralized, 

1 Literally, a “stroke of state.” This is the name given in France to in¬ 
fractions of the constitution by some part of the government through the 
use of force. Happily the thing itself has been so unknown to English his¬ 
tory that the English language has to borrow the French name. The at¬ 
tempt of Charles I to seize the five members (p. 376) was something of the 
sort. The coming century was to see many a coup d'etat in France; and 
like phenomena have been common in other European countries. 


Overthrow 
of the 
Directory: 
Bonaparte, 
First Consul 


Centraliza¬ 
tion intensi¬ 
fied 


436 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


Restoration 
of order 


Reforms 


The “ Code 
Napoleon ” 


so that, independent of Bonaparte’s will, there did not exist 
anywhere the authority to light or repair the streets of the 
meanest village. 1 

Within France Bonaparte used his vast authority to restore 
order and heal strife. Royalist and Jacobin were welcomed to 
public employment and to favor; and a hundred and fifty thou¬ 
sand exiles, of the best blood and brain of France, returned, 
to reinforce the citizen bod} r . Wages rose ; the French people 
built up a vast material prosperity; and the burden of taxes 
was distributed with fair justice upon all classes. Political 
liberty was gone; but the economic gains of the Revolution 
were preserved. An agreement with the pope (“the Concor¬ 
dat”) reconciled the Catholic church to the state. All bishops 
were replaced by new ones ayyointed by Napoleon and conse¬ 
crated by the pope. The church became Roman again, but 
it was supported and controlled by the state. The reform 
work of the great Convention of ’93 had been dropped by the 
Directory. Some parts of it were now taken up again. Public 
education was organized (on paper); corruption and extrav¬ 
agance in the government gave way to order and efficiency; 
law was simplified, and justice was made cheaper and easier 
to secure. 

This last work was the most enduring and beneficent of all. 
The Convention of ’93 had begun to reform the outgrown ab¬ 
surdities of the confused mass of French laws. The First Con¬ 
sul now completed the task. A commission of great lawyers, 
working under his direction and inspiration, swiftly reduced 
the vast chaos of old laws to a marvelously compact, simple, 
symmetrical code. This body of law included the new prin¬ 
ciples of equality born of the Revolution. It soon became the 
basis of law for practically all Europe, except England, Russia, 
and Turkey. From Spain it spread to all Spanish America, 
and it lies at the foundation of the law of the State of Louisiana. 


1 This new administration was vigorous and fearless; and under Na¬ 
poleon’s energy and genius, it conferred upon France great and rapid benefits. 
But, in the long run, the result was to he unquestionably harmful. The chance 
for Frenchmen to train themselves at their own gates in the duties and re¬ 
sponsibilities of freemen, by sharing in the local government, was lost. 




THE CONSULATE 


437 


Napoleon himself declared, after his overthrow, “Waterloo 
will wipe out the memory of my forty victories ; but that which 
nothing can wipe away is my Civil Code. That will live for¬ 
ever.” 

In all this reconstruction, the controlling mind was that of 
the First Consul. Functionaries worked as they had worked 
for no other master. Bonaparte knew how to set every man 
the right task; and his own matchless activity (he sometimes 
worked twenty hours a day) made it possible for him to over¬ 
see countless designs. His penetrating intelligence seized the 
essential point of every problem, and his indomitable will drove 
through all obstacles to a quick and effective solution. His 
ardor, his ambition for France and for glory, his passion for 
good work, his contempt for difficulties, inspired every official, 
until, as one of them said, “ the gigantic entered into our habit 
of thought.” 


The last of 
the benevo¬ 
lent despots 


CHAPTER XLVI 


“ Emperor 
Napoleon 
the First ” 


Plebiscites 


System of 
spies 


Free speech 
suppressed 


NAPOLEON AND THE EMPIRE, 1804-1814 

Soon Bonaparte made it clear that he meant to seize the 
trappings of monarchy as well as its power. In 1802 he had 
himself elected “Consul for Life.” He set up a court, with 
all the forms of monarchy, and began to sign papers by his first 
name only — Napoleon — as kings sign. Then, in 1804, he 
obtained another vote of the nation declaring him “Emperor 
of the French,” and he solemnly crowned himself at Paris, 
with the presence and sanction of the pope, as the successor of 
Charlemagne. 

Napoleon always claimed that he ruled by the “will of the 
French people ”; and each assumption of power was given a 
show of ratification by a popular vote, or plebiscite. But the 
plebiscite was merely the nation’s Yes or No to a question 
framed by the master. The nation had no share at any stage in 
shaping the questions upon which it was to vote; and even the vote 
was controlled largely by skillful coercion. A plebiscite was 
a thin veil for military despotism. At the same time, it must 
be acknowledged that the French people tamely surrendered 
to a despotic master who flattered their vanity and fed their 
material prosperity. 

Individuals who resisted found themselves subject to a 
tyranny worse than that of the old monarchy. Napoleon 
maintained a vast network of secret police and spies , and in ten 
years he sent thirty-six hundred men to prison or into exile by 
his mere order. No book could be published if it contained 
opinions offensive to the emperor. Newspapers were forbidden 
to print anything “contrary to the duties of subjects”: they 
were required to omit all news “ disadvantageous or disagreeable 
to France,” and in political matters they were allowed to pub¬ 
lish only such items as were furnished them by the government. 

438 







NEW EUROPEAN WARS 


439 


Even the schools were made to preach despotism, and were com¬ 
manded to “take as the basis of their instruction fidelity to 
the Emperor.” Religion, too, was pressed into service. An 
Imperial Catechism was devised, and used in all schools, ex¬ 
pressly to teach the duty of all good Christians to obey the 
Emperor. 1 

In 1802 Napoleon told his Council of State that he should The “ Na- 
welcome war and that he expected it. Europe, he declared, ^rs”* 0 
needed a single head, an emperor, to distribute the various king¬ 
doms among lieutenants. He felt, too, that victories and mili¬ 
tary glory were needful to prevent the French nation from mur¬ 
muring against his despotism. Naturally, other nations felt 
that there could be no lasting peace with Napoleon except on 
terms of absolute submission. Under such conditions as these, 
war soon broke out afresh. England and France came to blows 
again in 1803, and there was to be no more truce between them 
until Napoleon’s fall. During the next eleven years, Napoleon 
fought also three wars with Austria, two with Prussia, two with 
Russia, a long war with Spain, and various minor conflicts. 

The European wars from 1792 to 1802 belong to the period 
of the French Revolution proper. Those from 1803 to 1815 
are “Napoleonic wars,” due primarily to the ambition of one 
great military genius. In the first series, Austria was the chief 
opponent of the Revolution : in the second series, England was 
the relentless foe of Napoleon. 

On the breaking out of war with England, Napoleon prepared 
a mighty flotilla and a magnificent army at Boulogne. Eng¬ 
land was threatened with overwhelming invasion if she should 
lose command of the Channel even for a few hours; but all 
Napoleon’s attempts to get together a fleet to compete with 
England’s failed. 

In 1805 Austria and Russia joined England in the war. With 
immediate decision, Napoleon transferred his forces from the 
Channel to the Danube, annihilated two great armies, at Ulm 
and Austerlitz, and, entering Vienna as a conqueror, forced 
1 Extracts are given in Anderson’s Documents, No. 65. 


440 


NAPOLEON EMPEROR 


Peace of 
Tilsit 


Trafalgar 



Austria to a humiliating peace. Prussia had maintained her 
neutrality for eleven years ; but now, with his hands free, Na¬ 
poleon goaded her into war, crushed her absolutely at Jena 
(October, 1806), occupied Berlin, and soon afterward dictated 
a peace that reduced Prussia one half in size and bound her to 
France as a vassal state. 

Less decisive conflicts with Russia were followed by the Peace 
of Tilsit (July, 1807). The Russian and French emperors met 
in a long interview, and Tsar Alexander was so impressed by 


The Vendome Column — made from Russian and Austrian cannon cap¬ 
tured in the Austerlitz campaign. The figures on the spirals represent 
scenes in that campaign, and upon the summit, 142 feet high, stands a 
statue of Napoleon. The name Vendome comes from the name of the 
public square. Napoleon was fond of imitating the memorial works of 
the Roman world-empire. 


Napoleon’s genius, that, from an enemy, he became a friend 
and ally. France, it was understood, was to rule Western 
Europe; Russia might aggrandize herself in the Eastern half 
at the expense of Sweden and Turkey; and the two Powers were 
to unite in ruining England by shutting out her commerce from 
the continent. 

England had proved as supreme on the seas as Napoleon on 
land. In 1805 , at Trafalgar , off the coast of Spain, Nelson 









THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 


441 


destroyed the last great fleet that Napoleon collected. 
Soon afterward a secret article in the Treaty of Tilsit 
agreed that Denmark (then a considerable naval power) 
should be made to add her fleet to the French; but the 
English government struck first. It demanded the surrender 
of the Danish fleet into English hands until the war should 
close, and finally it compelled the delivery by bombarding 
Copenhagen. 

After this, Napoleon could not strike at England with his 
armies, and he fell back upon an attempt to ruin her by crushing 
her commerce. All the ports of the continent were to be closed 
to her goods, and Napoleon stirred French scientists into des¬ 
perate efforts to invent substitutes for the goods shut out of the 
continent. (One valuable result followed. The English cruisers 
prevented the importation into France of West-India cane 
sugar; but it was discovered that sugar could be made from the 
beet, and the raising of the sugar-beet became a leading in¬ 
dustry in France.) 

This “Continental System” did inflict damage upon Eng¬ 
land, but it carried greater harm to the continent, which simply 
could not do without the manufactures of England, then the 
workshop of Europe. At times, even the French armies had 
to be clothed in smuggled English goods, and they marched into 
Russia in 1812 (p. 446) in English shoes. 

England’s retort to the Continental System was an attempt 
to blockade the coast of France and her dependencies to all 
neutral vessels. In these war measures, both France and Eng¬ 
land ignored the rights of neutral states. One result was the 
War of 1812 in America. In this struggle, unhappily, Amer¬ 
ica was to be drawn into fighting upon the side of the European 
despot, against the only champion of freedom, and upon the 
whole, into fighting that power which she had least reason to 
fight. 1 Happily, in that day, America’s part could not be 
decisive, and the contest did not much affect the European 
result. 


Napoleon’s 
“ Continen¬ 
tal System ” 


“ War of 
1812 ” in 
America 


1 As if, in 1914-1918, America had been drawn to Germany’s side, because 
the English blockade of Germany hurt American commerce. 



442 


NAPOLEON EMPEROR 


Napoleon 
and the 
Spanish 
people 


Napoleon 

after 

Wagram 


Napoleon’s 
new map of 
Europe 


Portugal refused to obey Napoleon’s order to confiscate the 
English vessels in her ports. Thereupon Napoleon’s armies 
occupied the kingdom. From this act, Napoleon passed to the 
seizure of Spain, placing his brother Joseph upon the throne. 
But the proud and patriotic Spanish people rose in a “War for 
Liberation.” Britain seized her opportunity, and sent an army 
under Wellesley (afterward Duke of Wellington) to support 

this “Peninsular revolt.” 
To the end, this struggle 
continued to drain Napo¬ 
leon’s resources. Long 
after, at St. Helena, he 
declared that it was really 
the Spanish war that 
ruined him. 

In 1809, encouraged by 
the Spanish rising, Aus¬ 
tria once more entered 
the lists, but a defeat 
at Wagram forced her 
again into submission. 
Napoleon now married 
a princess of Austria. 
He was anxious for an 
heir, and so divorced his 
former wife, Josephine, 
who had borne him no children, to make way for marriage 
with a grandniece of Marie Antoinette. This union of the Rev¬ 
olutionary emperor with the proud Hapsburg house marks in 
some respects the summit of his power. 

At the moment, the Spanish campaigns seemed trivial; 
and after Wagram, Napoleon was supreme in Central Europe. 
This period was marked by sweeping changes in territory. The 
most important may be grouped under four heads. 

L The Batavian Republic (p. 432) was converted into the 
Kingdom of Holland, with Napoleon’s brother Louis for its 




THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE 


443 


sovereign. Later, when Louis refused to ruin his people by 
enforcing the Continental System rigidly, Napoleon deposed 
him, and annexed Holland to France , along with the whole north 
coast of Germany as far as Denmark. 

2. In Italy the new republics and the old petty states were 
disposed of, one after another. Even the pope was deprived of 
his principality. When these changes were complete, Italy 
lay in three fairly equal divisions. In the south Napoleon’s 
brother, Joseph, ruled as King of Naples ; and when Joseph was 
promoted in 1809 to the throne of Spain, he was succeeded in 
Naples by Murat, one of Napoleon’s generals. In the northeast 
was the “ Kingdom of Italy,” with Napoleon himself as king — 
as Charlemagne and Otto and their successors had been “kings 
of Italy” ! The rest of the peninsula was made a part of France, 
and was organized as a French Department. 

3. The Illyrian province on the eastern coast of the Adriatic 
were annexed directly to France. 

4. Most important of all were the changes in Germany. To 
comprehend the significance of Napoleon’s work there, one 
must first grasp the bewildering conditions before his inter¬ 
ference. Until Napoleon, there was no true political Germany. 
The Holy Roman Empire was made up of: 

(1) Two “great states,” Austria and Prussia, each of them 
half Slavonic in blood; (2) some thirty states of the “ second 
rank,” like Bavaria; (3) about two hundred and fifty petty 
states of the “third order” (many of them under bishops or 
archbishops), ranging in size from a small duchy to a large farm, 
but averaging a few thousand inhabitants; (4) some fifteen 
hundred “knights of the empire,” who in England would have 
been country squires, but who in Germany were really in¬ 
dependent monarchs, with an average territory of three square 
miles, and some three hundred subjects apiece, over whom they 
held power of life and death; and (5) about fifty-six “free 
cities,” mostly in misrule, governed by narrow aristocracies. 

Each of the two hundred and fifty states of the “third rank,” 
like the larger ones, was an absolute monarchy, with its own laws, 
its own mimic court and army, its own coinage, and its crowd 


Germany 

before 

Napoleon 



Napoleon’s 
beginnings 
of consolida¬ 
tion 


End of the 
Holy 
Roman 
Empire 


Social re¬ 
form in 
Germany 


444 NAPOLEON EMPEROR 

cf pedantic officials. The “Sovereign Count” of Leimburg- 
Styrum-Wilhelmsdorf kept a standing army of one colonel, nine 
lower officers, and two privates! Each of the fifteen hundred 
“knights” had his own system of tariffs and taxes. 

Moreover, many a state of the second or third order consisted 
of several fragments 1 (obtained by accidents of marriage or war), 
sometimes widely scattered , — some of them perhaps wholly in¬ 
side a larger state to which politically they had no relation. 
No map can do justice to the quaint confusion of this region, 
the size of Saskatchewan, thus broken into eighteen hundred gov¬ 
ernments varying from an empire to a small estate, and scattered 
in fragments within fragments. (Map after p. 314.) 

Napoleon reduced Austria to an inland state, and halved 
Prussia, thrusting it east of the Elbe, and, further, turning 
its recent Polish acquisitions into a new Duchy of War¬ 
saw. As another check upon the two leading states, Napoleon 
augmented the states of the second rank, raising several into 
kingdoms. And, from a general hatred for disorder and anarchy, 
he encouraged all these states to absorb the ecclesiastical realms 
and the territories of the knights and of the petty principalities 
within or adjoining their borders, along with nearly all the “free 
cities.” Thus the “political crazy quilt ” of eighteen hundred 
states was simplified to thirty-eight states. (This tremendous 
consolidation, surviving the rearrangements after Napoleon’s 
fall, paved the way for later German unity.) 

Nearly all these German states, except Austria and Prussia, 
were leagued in the “Confederation of the Rhine,” under Na¬ 
poleon as “Protector.” This amounted to a dissolution of the 
Holy Roman Empire, and in 1806 Francis II laid down that 
venerable title. Napoleon himself posed as the successor of 
the Roman emperors. Francis was allowed to console himself 
with the title “Emperor of Austria,” for his hereditary realms, 
instead of his previous title there, “Arch-Duke of Austria.” 

Napoleon’s influence, too, began great social reforms in Ger¬ 
many. In the Confederation of the Rhine and in many kingdoms 
1 As indicated by such compound names as the one above. 


























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THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 


445 


of Napoleon’s brothers and generals, serfdom and feudalism 
were abolished, and civil equality and the “Code Napoleon” 
were introduced. Everywhere, too, the administration of 
justice was made cheap and simple, and the old clumsy and 
corrupt methods of government gave way to efficiency. 

Most striking of all was the reform in Prussia. In that state, 
reform came from a Prussian minister, and was adopted in order 
to make Prussia strong enough to cast off the French yoke. 
Jena had proved that the old Prussian system was utterly rotten. 
The guiding spirit in a new Prussian ministry was Stein , who 
labored to fit Prussia for leadership in freeing and regenerating 
Germany. The serfs were changed into free peasant-land¬ 
owners ; the caste distinctions in society were broken down: 
some self-government was granted to the towns; and many 
of the best principles of the French reforms were adopted. 
Napoleon’s insolence and the domination of the French 
armies at last had forced part of Germany into the beginning 
of a new national patriotism; and that patriotism began 
to arm itself by borrowing weapons from the arsenal of the 
French Revolution. 

In 1810 Napoleon’s power had reached its widest limits. The 
huge bulk of France filled the space from the Ocean to the Rhine, 
including not only the France we know, but also Belgium, half 
of Switzerland, and large strips of German territory, — while 
from this central body two outward-curving arms reached to¬ 
ward the east, one along the North Sea to the Danish Peninsula, 
and the other down the coast of Italy past Rome. 

This vast territory was all organized in French Departments. 
The rest of Italy and half the rest of Germany were under 
Napoleon’s “protection,” and were ruled by his appointees. 
Denmark and Switzerland, too, were his dependent allies; and 
Prussia and Austria were unwilling ones. Only the extremities 
of the continent kept their independence, and even there, 
Sweden and Russia were his friends. 

But Russia was growing hostile. Alexander was offended by 
the partial restoration of Poland (as the Duchy of Warsaw). 


Stein in 
Prussia 


Greatest 
extent of 
Napoleon’s 
sway 





446 


THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 


The “ Re¬ 
treat from 
Moscow ” 


Battle of 
Leipzig 



The Continental System, too, was growing more and more bur¬ 
densome. Russia needed English markets, and in 1811 the 
Tsar refused longer to enforce the “System.” 

Napoleon at once declared war. In 1812 he invaded Russia 
and penetrated to Moscow. The Russians set fire to the city, 
so that it should not afford him winter quarters; but, with rare 
indecision, he stayed there five weeks, hoping in vain that the 
Tsar would offer to submit. Then, too late, in the middle of 


Rising of the Prussians against Napoleon in 1813. — The people 
were often rallied by their pastors, as represented here by the Prussian 
artist, Arthur Kampf. 


October, when the Russian winter was already upon them, the 
French began the terrible “Retreat from Moscow,” fighting 
desperately each foot of the way against cold, starvation, and 
clouds of Cossack cavalry. Nine weeks later, twenty thousand 
miserable scarecrows recrossed the Niemen. The “ Grand 
Army,” a half million strong, had left its bones among Russian 
snows. 

The Russians kept up the pursuit into Germany, and the 
enthusiasm of the Prussian people forced its government to 
declare against Napoleon. University professors enlisted at 
the head of companies of their students in a “ war of liberation.” 





PLATE LXXVII 


: 


I 

« 


: 

















' * 


i&m&izkgi: 


Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow, — a painting by Verestchagin, a Russian artist who is credited with having 
used his art in several large pictures especially to arouse the world to a sense of the horrors of war. 






















































NAPOLEON’S OVERTHROW 


447 


Women gave their jewels and even their hair, to buy arms and 
supplies. The next summer, Austria also took up arms. By 
tremendous efforts, Napoleon raised a new army of boys and old 
men from exhausted France, and for a time he kept the field 
victoriously in Germany; but in October, 1813, he met crushing 
defeat at Leipzig, in the “Battle of the Nations.” 

Napoleon retreated across the Rhine. His vassal kings fled 
from their thrones, and most of the small states now joined his 
enemies. England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, acting in close 
concert, took to themselves the name “The Allies.” They now 
offered to leave Napoleon his crown, with the Rhine for the 
boundary of France. When these terms were haughtily refused, 
the Allies invaded France at several points, and, in spite of 
Napoleon’s superb defense, they entered Paris victoriously in 
March, 1814, and dictated peace. 

Napoleon was given a large allowance, and granted the island 
of Elba, in the Mediterranean, as an independent principality. 
The Bourbon heir to the French throne, one of the Emigrant 
brothers of Louis XVI, appeared, promised a constitution to 
France, and was quietly recognized by the French Senate as 
Louis XVIII. 1 To make this arrangement popular, the Allies 
granted liberal terms of peace. France kept her territory as it 
was before the Revolution. The Allies withdrew their ar¬ 
mies without imposing any war indemnity, such as France had 
exacted repeatedly from other countries; nor did they even 
take back the works of art that French armies had plundered 
from so many famous galleries in Europe. 

For Further Reading. — The best brief accounts are Stephens’ 
Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815, Rose’s Revolutionary and Napoleonic 
Era, and H. A. L. Fisher’s Napoleon. Anderson’s Constitutions and 
Documents has an admirable selection of source material. 

1 The son of Louis XVI had died in prison at Paris in 1795. According 
to the theory that he began to reign upon his father’s death in 1793, he is 
known as Louis XVII. 


Fall of 
Napoleon 






PART XI - REACTION, 1815-1848 


Political 
chaos in 
Europe 


The Con¬ 
gress of 
Vienna 


CHAPTER XLVII 

REACTION IN THE SADDLE, 1815-1820 

I. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

Napoleon had wiped away the old map of Europe, and now 
his map fell to pieces. All the districts which had been annexed 
to France since 1792, and all the states which had been created 
by Napoleon, were left without governments. The old rulers 
of these states were clamoring for restoration. Other rulers 
wanted new acquisitions to pay for their exertions against Na¬ 
poleon. There was also a fear pervading Europe that from 
France either new and dangerous “ Revolutionar}' ” ideas or 
a new military conqueror might overrun the world. To settle 
these problems — to arrange for “restoration,” “reparation,” 
and “guarantees” — the four “Allies” invited all the sover¬ 
eigns of Europe to a “ Peace Congress.” 

The Congress of Vienna assembled in November, 1814. The 
crowd of smaller monarchs and princes were entertained by 
their Austrian host in a constant round of masques and revels, 
while the four great Allies (Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain) 
did the work in private committee. From time to time, as 
they reached agreements, they announced results to the Con¬ 
gress for public ratification. 

The territorial rearrangements fall under three heads. 

1. Italy was left in twelve states , and Germany in thirty -eight. 
These were all restored to their old ruling families. (The other 
phases of the “restoration” can be treated most conveniently 
in the next chapter.) 


448 


CONGRESS OF VIENNA 


449 


2. The states along the French frontier were strengthened , as one 
u guarantee” against future aggression by France. (1) Holland 
was made into the Kingdom of the Netherlands, under the House 
of Orange, and Belgium was added to it, although the Belgians 
wished to be independent and objected very strongly to being 
made Dutch. (2) Nice and Savoy were given back to the King¬ 
dom of Sardinia, 1 to which was added also the old Republic of 
Genoa. (3) German territory west of the Rhine, now taken 
back from France, was divided between Prussia and Bavaria. 
(4) The Congress guaranteed the “neutrality” of Switzerland, 
promising that all would join in punishing any country which 
in future wars should march troops through that state. Thus 
the entire European frontier next France from the North Sea 
to the Mediterranean, was powerfully guarded. 

3 . The remaining rearrangements had to do, directly or in¬ 
directly, with “compensating ” the Allies for their exertions and 
losses. Under cover of high-sounding phrases about founding 
“a durable peace based upon a just division of power,” the 
Congress became “a Congress for loot” and began a disgraceful 
scramble for spoils. 

(1) Britain had stood out alone for years against the whole 
power of Napoleon, and she had incurred an enormous national 
debt by acting as paymaster of the various coalitions. In re¬ 
payment she now kept Malta, the Ionian Islands, Cape Colony, 
Ceylon, and a few other colonial acquisitions, mainly from the 
old Dutch empire, which she had occupied during the war. This 
left Britain the one great colonial power. Spain and Hol¬ 
land still had some possessions outside Europe; but their hold¬ 
ings were insignificant beside Britain’s. 

(2) Austria received back all her lost territory except distant 
Belgium, in place of which she accepted Venetia and Lombardy 
— much to the distaste of the inhabitants of those districts. 

(3) Alexander, Tsar of Russia, secured Finland from Sweden; 


Territorial 
rearrange¬ 
ments : 

“ restora¬ 
tions ” 
Guarantee 
against 
French 
attack 


Plunder for 
the Allies 


1 Sardinia had been part of the “Piedmont” (“Foot of the Mountain”) 
state in North Italy. When Savoy, and the rest of that state upon the main¬ 
land. fell to France, Sardinia remained for a time the sole possession of the 
“House of Savoy,” and afterward gave its name to the whole of the 
restored state. 









450 


REACTION VICTORIOUS 


The Allies 
nearly fall 
out 


and he demanded also further reward in Poland. The Duchy 
of Warsaw (p. 444), he insisted, should be made into a kingdom 
of Poland, and he should be the king. But this plan conflicted 
with Prussian ambition. 

(4) Prussia gained Pomerania from Sweden; but the Prus¬ 
sian king insisted also upon regaining the Polish provinces that 
Napoleon had taken from him for the Duchy of Warsaw. Alex¬ 
ander promised to aid Prussia to get Saxony instead. The 
king of Saxony had been a zealous ally of Napoleon to the last; 
and so, Alexander urged, it would be proper to make an exception 
in his case to the careful respect shown by the conquerors to 
all other “ legitimate rulers.” 

Prussia was ready to accept this; but Austria feared such 
extension of Prussia toward the heart of Germany, and vehe¬ 
mently opposed the plan. England took her side. Thus the 
four Allies were divided, Russia and Prussia against Austria 
and England, and came to the verge of war with one another. 
Perhaps the most interesting result of this was the way in which 
France wormed her way back into the European circle. The Allies 
had meant to give that “outlaw nation” no voice whatever 
at the peace table. But Talleyrand, the shrewd French diplo¬ 
mat, was present at Vienna as a looker-on; and now, by offering 
French aid to Austria and England at a critical moment, he 
won a place for his country in the Congress. Finally a com¬ 
promise was made — the more readily that Napoleon had broken 
loose. In addition to her gain of Pomerania, Prussia took half 
of Saxony and considerable German territory, recovered from 
France, west of the Rhine. 

It should be noted that Sweden , which in the time of Peter 
the Great had surrounded the Baltic , had now retired wholly into 
the northern peninsula. There, however, she found some 
compensation. Denmark (which had been the ally of Na¬ 
poleon) now had to surrender Nonvay, and this land the Congress 
of Vienna turned over to Sweden in return for Finland and 
Pomerania. How, out of this arrangement, the Norwegians 
won independence in a ninety years’ struggle is told in a later 
chapter, — one of the finest stories of the nineteenth century. 


PLATE LXXVIII 



The Congress of Vienna. — An authorized painting by Jean Isabey. 





































































PLATE LXXIX 



nambulist of a shattered dream. 










WATERLOO 


451 


During the dissensions regarding Saxony, the Congress was 
startled by the news that Napoleon had left Elba. A few 
months of Bourbon rule had filled France with unrest. The 
Tricolor, under which Frenchmen had marched in triumph into 
nearly every capital in Europe, had been replaced by the Bour¬ 
bon White flag, and many Napoleonic officers had been dis¬ 
missed from the army to make way for returned Emigrants, 
who for twenty years had fought against France. Thus the 
army was restless. The extreme Royalists were talking, too, 
of restoring the land of the church and of the Emigrants, though 
it had passed for a generation into other hands. In consequence, 
the peasants and the middle class were uneasy. 

Napoleon, learning how matters stood, landed in France, 
almost unattended. The forces sent to capture him joined his 
standard; and in a few days, he entered Paris in triumph, with¬ 
out firing a shot. The king and the old Emigrants emigrated 
again. Napoleon offered a liberal constitution, and France 
accepted it by an overwhelming plebiscite. 

The Allies, however, declared unrelenting war upon Napoleon 
as “the disturber of the peace of Europe.” No time was given 
him for preparation. After a brief rule, he was crushed at Water¬ 
loo by the English under Wellington and the Prussians under 
Bliicher (June 18, 1815), and sent this time to hopeless exile, 
under guard, on the distant volcanic rock of St. Helena in the 
South Atlantic. 

The Allies reentered Paris, “bringing Louis XVIII in their 
baggage,” as the French wits put it, and dictated to France a neic 
treaty , much more severe than that of 1814. Prussia, indeed, 
urged that France should be dismembered, as she herself had 
been after Jena. Some Prussian papers talked of killing off the 
whole French people “like mad dogs,” and moderate statesmen 
wished to take Alsace and Lorraine (as Bismarck did do fifty 
years later) and other territory that had been seized from Ger¬ 
many by Louis XIV. But Alexander and England insisted on 
milder punishment; and France was required only (1) to give 
up some small strips of land containing about a half-million 
people, (2) to pay a small war indemnity ($140,000,000), and 


Napoleon’s 
brief return 
“ The Hun¬ 
dred Days ’ 


Waterloo 


Mild terms 
for France 





452 


REACTION VICTORIOUS 


A peace of 
kings, not 
of peoples 



(3) to restore the works of art which Napoleon’s armies had 
plundered from European galleries. 

During the “Hundred Days,” of Napoleon’s rule, the Con¬ 
gress finished its work. That “assemblage of princes and 
lackeys ” stood for reaction. As an English historian says, —■ 
“It complacently set to work to turn back the hands of time 
to the historic hour at which they stood before the Bastille fell.” 
It represented kings , not peoples. All the republics which had 
appeared since the French Revolution, and also the old republics 
(the United Provinces, Venice, and Genoa), were given to 


Napoleon after Surrender. — Fearing that the other allies might take his 
life after Waterloo, he hastened to surrender to the British frigate Bellerophon. 

monarchs. “ Republics,” said the Austrian Metternich (p. 453), 
“seem to have gone out of fashion.” Switzerland was the only 
republic left in Europe, — and it was given an inefficient, loose 
union, far less effective than it had enjoyed under Napoleon’s 
supremacy. Peoples were never consulted. The Congress trans¬ 
ferred Belgians, Norwegians, Poles, Venetians, from freedom 
to a master, or from one master to another, — in every case 
against their fierce resentment. The next hundred years were 
to be busied very largely in undoing this work — until not one 
stone of the building was left upon another. 


































































THE RULE OF METTERNICH 


453 


II. THE RULE OF METTERNICH 

For five years, reaction and despotism held the stage. In 
many states, especially in the pettier ones, the restoration of the 
old rulers was accompanied by ludicrous absurdities. The 
princes who had scampered away before the French eagles 
came back to show that they had “ learned nothing and forgotten 
nothing.” They set out to ignore the past twenty years. In 
France a school history spoke of Austerlitz as “a victory gained 
by General Bonaparte, a lieutenant of the king”! The king 
of Sardinia restored serfdom. The Papal States and Spain 
again set up the Inquisition. In some places French plants 
were uprooted from the botanical gardens, and street lamps 
and vaccination were abolished because they were “French 
improvements.” 

The statesmen of the Great Powers must have smiled to 
themselves at some of these extremes; but they, too, almost 
universally strove to suppress progress. Five states — 
Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, and England — really deter¬ 
mined the policy of Europe. The first four were “divine right” 
monarchies. Louis XVIII gave France a limited Charter, but 
it carefully preserved the theory of divine right. That theory, 
of course, could have no place in England, where the monarchy 
rested on the Revolution of 1688; but even in England the 
Whigs were discredited, because they had sympathized at first 
with the French Revolution. For some years the government 
there was in the hands of the Tory party, which was bitterly 
opposed to progress. 

“The rule of Napoleon was succeeded by the rule of Met- 
ternich” — the Austrian minister. Metternich was subtle, 
adroit, industrious, witty, unscrupulous. His political creed 
he summed up thus: “ Sovereigns alone are entitled to guide 
the destinies of their peoples, and they are responsible to none 
but God. . . . Government is no more a subject for debate 
than religion is.” The “new ideas” ®f democracy and equality 
and nationality 1 ought never to have been allowed to get into 

1 The sentiment of nationality is the feeling among all the people of one 
race, speech, and country that they should make one political state, or be- 


Absurdities 
of the reac¬ 
tion after 
1815 


Metternich, 
the evil 
genius of 
the reaction 





454 


REACTION VICTORIOUS 


The 

Germanic 

Confedera¬ 

tion 


Europe, he said; but, since they were in, the business of gov¬ 
ernments must be to keep them doivn. 

The Liberals of Europe had greeted Napoleon’s overthrow 
with joyous acclaim; but soon it seemed that Waterloo had 
simply “ replaced one insolent giant by a swarm of swaggering 
pygmies.” The Allied despots had roused the peoples, with 
promises of constitutions, to overthrow a rival despot, and then 
they betrayed the peoples and recalled their promises only as 
a jest. A few months after Waterloo, the English poet Byron 
lamented that “the chain of banded nations has been broke in 
vain by the accord of raised-up millions”; and, “standing on 
an Empire’s dust” at the scene of the great battle, and noting 
“How that red rain has made the harvest grow,” he mused: 

(( Gaul may champ the bit and foam in fetters, 

But is Earth more free? 

Did nations combat to make one submit, 

Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty? . . . 

Then o’er one fallen despot boast no more.” 

Metternich’s chief victory at the Congress of Vienna lay in 
the new organization of Germany. No one thought of restoring 
the discredited Holy Roman Empire. Liberal Germany, rep¬ 
resented by Stein (p. 445), had hoped for a real union, either 
in a consolidated German Empire or in a new federal state. 
But Metternich saw that in a true German empire, Austria (with 
her Slav, Hungarian, and Italian interests) could not long keep 
the lead against Prussia. He preferred to leave the various 
states practically independent, so that Austria, the largest of 
all, might play them off against one another. The small rulers, 
too, were hostile to a real union, because it would limit their 
sovereignties. Metternich allied himself, in the Congress, 
with these princes of the small states, and won. The thirty- 
eight German states were organized into a “ Germanic Confeder¬ 
ation, a loose league of thirty-four sovereign princes and of the 
governments of the surviving “free cities,”—Hamburg, 

come a nation. This feeling tended to draw all Germans into one German 
state, and all Italians into one Italian state. In any conglomerate state, 
like Austria in that day, the feeling of nationality was likely to be a dis¬ 
rupting force. 



























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THE GERMANIC CONFEDERATION 


455 


Bremen, Liibeck, and Frankfort. Each state controlled its 
own government, its own army, its own tariffs, and its own 
foreign diplomacy, — although they did promise not to make 
war upon one another. The one organ of the Confederation 
was a Federal Diet at Frankfort. This was merely a standing 
conference of ambassadors appointed by the sovereigns : no im¬ 
portant action could be taken without the consent of every state. 

But though the chance for making one German nation had 
been lost, the Liberals still hoped, for a time, for free political 
institutions in the separate states. Within the next four years, 
moderately liberal constitutions were granted in several states, 
especially in South Germany, where the people had been greatly 
influenced by the French Revolution. Frederick William III 
of Prussia, also, appointed a committee to draw up the consti¬ 
tution that he had twice promised solemnly in the war of libera¬ 
tion. But he was a vacillating man, greatly influenced by the 
nobles, who railed bitterly at the idea of free institutions; and 
after the committee had dawdled along for four years, he repu¬ 
diated his pledge. 

Outside the Rhine districts the Liberals were made up of 
writers, journalists, students, professors, and a few others from 
the small educated middle class. In the universities, professors 
and students organized societies ( Burschenschaften ) to agitate 
for German freedom and union. Some boyish demonstrations 
by such societies threw sober statesmen into spasms of fear, and 
seemed to them to prelude a revolutionary “Reign of Terror.” 
Unhappily, Metternich’s hand was strengthened also by the 
foolish crimes of some Liberal enthusiasts. A small section of 
radical agitators preached that even assassination in the cause 
of liberty was right; and, in 1819, a fanatical student murdered 
Kotzebue, a Russian representative in Germany, who was sup¬ 
posed to be drawing the Tsar away from his earlier liberal sym¬ 
pathies. 

Metternich was prompt to seize the chance. He at once called 
the leading sovereigns of Germany to a conference at Karlsbad. 
There he secured their approval for a series of resolutions, which 
he afterward forced through the Diet at Frankfort. These 


A few con¬ 
stitutions 


Disappoint¬ 
ment and 
radical 
agitation 


The Karls¬ 
bad Decrees 








456 


THE GERMANIC CONFEDERATION 


Karlsbad Decrees of 1819 were especially directed against free 
speech in the press and in the universities. They forbade secret 
societies among students; they appointed a government official 
in every university to discharge any professor who should preach 
doctrines “hostile to the public order”; they set up a rigid 
censorship of all printed matter; they created a standing com¬ 
mittee to hunt down conspiracies; and these despotic purposes 
were enforced for many years by the exile or cruel imprisonment 
of thousands of high-souled youths and gentle scholars, — for 
singing patriotic songs or for wearing black, red, and orange (the 
colors of the old Empire), which had become the symbol of 
German unity. 1 

For Further Reading. — The most desirable general treatment of 
the nineteenth century for high schools is Hazen’s Europe Since 1815. 
Duplicate copies of this work will bp better than a multiplicity of refer¬ 
ences ; but students should have access also to Carlton Hayes’ Modern 
Europe, II. 

Exercise. — Add to the list of dates 1776, 1789, 1815. 

1 These colors had been used as the flag of the patriotic uprising against 
Napoleon in 1814 ; but their use was now punished severely — even in such 
ingeniously evasive combinations as a black coat, a yellow (straw) hat, and 
a red vest! 




CHAPTER XLVIII 


UNSUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS, 1820-1830 

The history of the nineteenth century is the history of the influences 
which the French Revolution left. — Frederic Harrison. 

No land touched by the French Revolution was ever again quite the same. 
— Frederick A. Ogg. 

The first attacks upon Metternich’s system came from the 
south of Europe. The Spanish patriots who rose in 1808 
against Napoleon (p. 442) found themselves without a govern¬ 
ment. Their king was in the hands of the French. The in¬ 
surgent leaders came largely from the small, educated middle 
class, who had been converted to the ideals of the early French 
Revolution. These leaders set up a representative assembly 
(the Cortes), and, in 1812, they adopted the liberal “ Constitu¬ 
tion of 1812 ” (modeled upon the French Constitution of 
1791). 

Meantime, when Napoleon seized Spain, the Spanish Ameri¬ 
can states refused to recognize his authority, and so became 
virtually independent, under governments of their own. At 
first, most of these new governments were in name loyal to the 
Spanish crown. During the next few years, however, the Span¬ 
ish Americans experienced the benefits of freedom and of free 
trade with the world, and began to follow the example of the 
United States, which had so recently been merely a group of 
European colonies. By 1820, all the Spanish states on the con¬ 
tinent of America had become virtually independent nations. 

After the fall of Napoleon, the Spanish king, Ferdinand, re¬ 
turned to his throne. He had promised to maintain the new 
constitution; but he soon broke his pledges, restored all the old 
iniquities, and cruelly persecuted the Liberal heroes of the “ war 
of liberation.’’ In 1820 he collected troops to subdue the re- 

457 


The 

Spanish 
“Constitu¬ 
tion of 1812” 


Independ¬ 
ence of 
Spanish 
America 


Restoration 
of Ferdi¬ 
nand 





458 REACTION AND REVOLUTION AFTER 1820 


The Spanish 
Revolution 
of 1820 


Revolution 
spreads 
through the 
south of 
Europe 


Interven¬ 
tion by 
“ the Holy 
Alliance ” 


England 

protests 


Spanish 

constitu¬ 

tionalism 

crushed 


volted colonies ; but one of the regiments, instead of embarking, 
raised the standard of revolt and proclaimed the Constitution 
of 1812. Tumult followed in Madrid. The king, cowardly as 
he was treacherous, yielded, and restored the constitution. 

This Spanish Revolution of 1820 became the signal for like 
attempts in other states. Before the year closed, Portugal and 
Naples both forced their kings to grant constitutions modeled 
upon that of Spain. Early in the next year, the people and 
army of Piedmont rebelled, to secure a constitution for the 
Kingdom of Sardinia. Lombardy and Venetia stirred rest¬ 
lessly in the grasp of Austria. And the Greeks began a long 
struggle for independence against Turkey. 

We have seen how Metternich used the Germanic Confeder¬ 
acy, designed for protection against foreign attack, to stifle 
liberalism in Germany. We are now to observe how he adroitly 
twisted an alliance of monarchs from its original purpose in order 
to crush these revolutions in Southern Europe. 

After Waterloo, while the four “Allies” were still in Paris 
(November 20, 1815), they agreed to preserve their union and 
to hold meetings from time to time. The purpose was to guard 
against any future aggression by France. But when the rev¬ 
olutions of 1820 began, Metternich assembled the absolute sov¬ 
ereigns of Austria, Russia, and Prussia in a “Congress” at 
Troppau, where they signed a declaration that they would unite 
to put down revolution against any established government. 
England protested, both before and after the meeting, de¬ 
claring that each nation should manage its internal affairs as 
it chose, and on this issue, she now withdrew from the alliance 
of 1815 — which from this time is known popularly as the Holy 
Alliance. 1 

Undaunted by England’s opposition, the banded despots 
promptly marched overwhelming armies into Italy and restored 
absolutism in both Naples and Piedmont; and then, flushed 
with success, determined next to overthrow also the Spanish 

1 The confusion which explains this name is discussed in Hazen’s Europe 
since 1815, p. 14.. 


THE HOLY ALLIANCE 


459 


constitution, from which the “contagion of liberty” had spread. 
In 1822, at a Congress at Verona, they were joined by France. 
England again protested vigorously. The French representative 
tried to reconcile England by pleading that a constitution might 
be all very well in Spain, but that it should be a constitution 
granted by the king, not one 
forced upon him by rebels 
against his authority. Wel¬ 
lington, the English repre¬ 
sentative, Tory though he 
was, fitly answered this 
“divine right” plea: “Do 
you not know, sir, that it 
is not kings who make con¬ 
stitutions, but constitutions 
that make kings ! ” 

But on land, England 
could do no more than 
protest, and, with the sanc¬ 
tion of the “crowned con¬ 
spirators of Verona,” a 
French army restored the 
old absolutism in Spain. 

The “Holy Alliance” 
planned also to restore 
monarchic control in the revolted Spanish colonies. But here 
they failed. On the sea England was supreme ; and she made 
it known that she would oppose the intended expedition with 
all her great might. Once more, as in Napoleon’s day and in 
Philip II’s, the English sea power saved liberty. 

America shares in the credit of checking the despots. Can¬ 
ning, the English minister, urged the United States to join Eng¬ 
land in an alliance to protect Spanish America. The United 
States chose to act without formal alliance, but did act along 
the same lines. President Monroe’s message to Congress in 
1823 announced to the world that this country would oppose any 
1 Consult Max Farrand, Development of the United States. 



Spanish 

America 

saved by 

England 

and the 

Monroe 

Doctrine 







460 REACTION AND REVOLUTION AFTER 1820 


attempt of the despotic Powers to extend their “political sys¬ 
tem” to America. 1 


Greek inde¬ 
pendence 
secured 


Battle of 
Navarino 


Almost at once Metternich met another check, in the affairs 
of Greece. The rising there had been accompanied by terrible 
massacres of all Turks dwelling in the country, and the exasper¬ 
ated Turkish government was now putting down the rebellion 
by a war of extermination. For a time Metternich hoped to 
bring about intervention by the allied Powers to restore Turkish 
authority; but he failed from two causes. 

1. The educated classes of Western Europe had been nourished 
mainly on the ancient Greek literature, and now their imagination 
was fired by the thought that this struggle against the Turks 
was a contest akin to the glorious ancient war against the Per¬ 
sians. The man who did most to widen this sympathy was 
Byron, the English poet, who closed a career of mingled genius 
and generosity and wrongdoing by a noble self-devotion, giving 
fortune and life to the Greek cause. Numbers of volunteers, 
aroused by his passionate lyrics, followed him to fight for 
Greek liberty, and before any government had taken action, the 
Turks complained that they had to contend with all Europe. 

2. The Russian people felt a deep sympathy for the Greeks as 
their co-religionists, and a deeper hatred for the Turks as their 
hereditary foes, so that the Tsar could not join in open 
intervention against the revolution. 

Finally, indeed, intervention came, but for the Greeks. The 
English, French, and Russian fleets had proceeded to Greece to 
enforce a truce, so as to permit negotiation. The three fleets were 
acting together under the lead of the English admiral, who hap¬ 
pened to be the senior officer. Almost by chance, and chiefly 
through the excited feelings of the common sailors, the fleets 
came into conflict with the Turkish fleet, and annihilated it in 
the battle of Navarino (October, 1827). The English com¬ 
mander had gone beyond his instructions, but excited public 
feeling gave the government no chance to disown him. So the 
three Powers forced Turkey to grant independence to the Greeks. 


1 This is one part of the famous Monroe Doctrine. 



SECOND FRENCH REVOLUTION 


461 


Elsewhere, however, Metternich was triumphant. For ten 
years after the overthrow of the gallant Spanish Revolution, the 
reactionists had things their own way from England to Greece. 
The next attack on Metternich’s system came from France in 1830. 

When Louis XVIII became king of France (p. 447) he knew 
that the people must have some assurance of those personal 
liberties which they had won in the Revolution. Accordingly 
he gave to the nation the “ Charter of ISIS/’ In this way he 
saved the theory of “divine right” ; and the preamble expressly 
declared the king the source of all authority. Still this grant 
gave the people of France more freedom than any other large 
country on the continent then had, — confirming religious lib¬ 
erty, equality before the law, free speech, and freedom of the 
press. Political liberty, however, was extremely limited. 
There was provided a legislature of two Houses, — the Peers 
(appointed by the king) and the Deputies; but the property 
qualification for voting was put so high that only about one out 
of seventy adult males had any voice in the elections. More¬ 
over, the king kept an absolute veto and the sole right to propose 
laws, along with Napoleon’s system of control over all local ad¬ 
ministration. 

In 1824 the shrewd Louis was succeeded by his arbitrary and 
extremely reactionary brother, Charles X. Now the govern¬ 
ment curtailed the freedom of the press, closed the historical 
lectures of Guizot (a very moderate Liberal), and plundered 
$200,000,000 from the treasury for returned Emigrants. It 
was plain, too, that the king was bent upon restoring to 
the church its old lands and its old control over education, 
and upon punishing the old Revolutionists. 

In 1827 came the election of a new Chamber of Deputies, and, 
despite the narrow electorate, that body had a large majority 
of Liberals, vehemently opposed to the king’s policy. Charles 
tried to disregard that majority and to keep his old ministers 
in power; but (March 2, 1830) the Assembly, by a vote of 221 
to 182, adopted a bold address calling for the dismissal of the 
ministry, — “that menace to public safety.” Charles instead 


The French 
Charter of 
1815 


Charles X 


462 REACTION AND REVOLUTION AFTER 1820 


The “ July 
Ordi¬ 
nances ” of 
1830 


The “ July 
Days ” 


The end of 
divine right 
in France 


A limited 
monarchy 


dissolved the Chamber. Public interest was intense, and the 
aged Lafayette journeyed through France to organize the Liber¬ 
als for the next contest at the polls. The new elections in June 
destroyed the reactionary party. Every deputy who had voted 
against the ministry was reelected, and the Liberals gained also 
fifty of the remaining seats. 

Twice defeated by the votes of even the oligarchic landlords, 
but no whit daunted, the stubborn monarch tried a coup d’etat. 
He suspended the Charter by a series of edicts, known as the 
July Ordinances. These Ordinances (1) forbade the publication 
of newspapers without royal approval, (2) dissolved the new 
legislature (which had not yet met), and (3) promulgated a new 
law for elections so as to put control into the h'ands of a still 
smaller class of great landlords. 

The Ordinances were published July 26, 1830. That day, 
forty-one journalists of Paris, led by the young Thiers, 1 printed 
a protest, declaring the Ordinances illegal and calling upon 
France to resist them. The journalists had in mind only legal 
resistance, not violence; but there were in Paris a few old Rev¬ 
olutionists who were ready to go further. The same evening 
these radicals appointed “Committees of Insurrection” for the 
various districts of the city. The next morning angry crowds 
thronged the streets, and threw up barricades out of paving 
stones. That night Lafayette reached Paris, to take charge of 
the revolt. The regular troops made only half-hearted resist¬ 
ance. They lacked good leadership, and they hated to fire 
on the rebel flag, — the old tricolor. About four thousand men 
were slain in three days’ fighting. Then Charles fled to England. 
Outside Paris, there was no fighting, hut the nation gladly accepted 
this “ Second French Revolution .” 

The “divine-right monarchy” in France was now replaced 
by a constitutional kingship. The legislature, which Charles 
had tried to dissolve, restored the tricolor as the flag of France, 
made the Charter into a more liberal constitution, and then 


1 Thiers had been preaching boldly in his newspaper the English constitu¬ 
tional doctrine, — “The king reigns; he does not govern." 



PLATE LXXX 



A Paris Barricade in 1830, — by the contemporary French artist, Georges Cain. 

















































































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GAINS FOR FRANCE AND BELGIUM 


463 


offered the crown to Louis Philippe 1 (a distant cousin of Charles), 
on condition that he accept this amended Charter. The old Charter 
had declared that the king ruled “by the grace of God.” The 
new document added the words, u and by the will of the na¬ 
tion:” 

In this vital respect, the Second French Revolution corre¬ 
sponded to the English Revolution of 1688. In other ways it 
did not go so far. It did give to the legislature the right to 
introduce bills, and it doubled the number of voters, extending 
the franchise to all who paid forty dollars in direct taxes; but 
this still left twenty-nine men out of thirty without votes. 

The revolution was not confined to France. For a moment, 
Metternich’s system tottered over Europe. Belgium broke 
away from the king of Holland, to whom the Congress of Vienna 
had given it. Poland rose against the Tsar, to whom the Con¬ 
gress had given it. The states of Italy rose against Austria and 
the Austrian satellites, to whom the Congress had given them. 
And in Germany there were uprisings in all absolutist states, 
to demand the constitutions which the Congress had not given. 

The final gains, however, were not vast. Belgium did become 
an independent monarchy, with the most liberal constitution 
on the continent. And France, besides her own gains, was def¬ 
initely lost to the Holy Alliance of divine-right despots. (In¬ 
deed France joined England in protecting Belgium by arms 
igainst “ intervention” — so that Metternich called London 
and Paris “the two mad-houses of Europe.”) But Tsar Nicho¬ 
las crushed the Poles, took away the constitution that Alex¬ 
ander had given them during his rule, and made Alexander’s 
“Kingdom of Poland” into a mere Russian province. Aus¬ 
tria crushed the Italian revolts; and then, his hands free once 
more, Metternich restored “order” (and despotism) in the 
disturbed German states. 

1 As a youth Louis Philippe had taken the side of the First Revolution 
in 1789, and had fought gallantly in the French Revolutionary armies, 
until the extremists drove him into exile. Then, instead of joining the 
royalist emigrants in their attacks on France, he had fled to England and 
America — where he earned his living by teaching French. 


The Charter 
amended 


Spread of 
revolution 


Gains and 
losses in 
1830 






464 REACTION AND REVOLUTION AFTER 1820 


Still, reaction had lost much of its confidence; and when the 
next year of revolutions came, Metternich’s system fell forever 
in Western Europe. That successful “Revolution of 1848” 
began in France, but it was the work of a new class of working¬ 
men, — factory workers, — who themselves were the product of 
a new industrial system that had grown up first in England. We 
must go back for that story. 


CHAPTER XLIX 


ENGLAND AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 

While France was giving the world her first great social and 
political revolution, with noise and blood, toward the close of 
the eighteenth century, England had been working out quietly 
an even greater revolution which was to change the work and 
daily life of the masses of men and women and children over all 
the world. This “revolution” was at first a change in the ways 
in which certain kinds of work were done; so we call it “ the In¬ 
dustrial Revolution.” It was not wrought by kings, or generals, 
but by humble workers busied in. homely toil, puzzling day after 
day over wheels and belts and rollers and levers, seeking some 
way to save time. 

Our life and labor differ far more widely from that of our 
great-great-grandfathers in the time of the Seven Years’ War, 
than their life and labor differed from that of men in the 
time of Charlemagne a thousand years before. In the days 
of Voltaire and Pitt the Elder, men raised grain, and wove 
cloth, and carried their spare products to market, in almost pre¬ 
cisely the same way in which these things had been done for six 
thousand years. 

The first improvements came in England. Early in the eight¬ 
eenth century, landlords there had introduced a better system of 
“crop-rotation,” raising roots like beets and turnips on the field 
formerly left fallow (p. 275). The added root crops made it possi¬ 
ble to feed more cattle — which furnished more manure, which in¬ 
creased all crops. Mechanical invention in agriculture came a 
little later. In 1785 the first threshing machine was invented, 
and enterprising “gentlemen farmers” soon began to use it; but 
it was exceedingly crude. The cradle scythe — a hand tool, but 
,a vast improvement on the old sickle for harvesting grain — was 

465 


The “ In¬ 
dustrial 
Revolution ” 


Little 
change in 
industry for 
iooo years 
before 1750 


The revo¬ 
lution in 
English 
agriculture 






466 


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 


The revolu¬ 
tion in 
transporta¬ 
tion 


Weaving 

and 

spinning 


patented in America in 1803. The cast-iron plow 1 appeared 
about 1800, permitting deeper plowing and more rapid work; but 
for some time, even in America, farmers were generally preju¬ 
diced against it, asserting that the iron “ poisoned the 
ground. 

When these changes in agricultural production were just be¬ 
ginning there came also a change in transportation. Merchan¬ 
dise had been carried from place to place on pack horses; and 
travel was on horseback, or (on a few roads) by clumsy slow six- 
horse coaches. But about 1750 England began building turn¬ 
pikes” (with frequent barriers where tolls were collected from 
travelers to keep up repairs); a Scotch engineer, MacAdam, gave 
his name to “Macadamized” roads; and soon extensive canals 
(with “ locks ” to permit a boat to pass from one level to another) 
began to care for most of the bulky commerce. 

The change that was really to revolutionize society, how¬ 
ever, came in manufacturing, and first in spinning. In Queen 
Elizabeth’s time, the fiber of flax or wool was drawn into thread 
by the distaff and spindle, as among the Stone-Age women. But 
in the seventeenth century in England, the distaff was replaced 
by the spinning wheel, — run first by one hand, but afterward by 
the foot of the spinner. Even the wheel, however (such as may 
now and then still be found tucked away in an old attic), drew 
out only one thread at a time. To spin thread enough to weave 
into the cloth for a family’s clothing was a serious task. Weav¬ 
ers didn’t get thread fast enough, and in 1761 the English 
Royal Society for the Encouragement of Manufacturers offered 
a prize for an invention for swifter spinning. Three years later, 
in 1764 ( just after the close of the Seven Years’ War), an English 
weaver, James Hargreaves, noticed that his wife’s spinning 
wheel, tipped over on the floor, kept whirling away for a sur¬ 
prising time. Taking a hint from this new position, he invented 
a machine where one wheel turned eight spindles, and spun eight 
threads, instead of one. Hargreaves called the new machine 
the “Jenny,” from his wife’s name. 


1 Improvements on the plow began with experiments on the shape of the 
mold board by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia. 



Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 
A Spinning Wheel found in use recently in a Swiss home. 

his wool or cotton through a series of rollers revolving at different 
rates, to draw out the thread ; and he drove these rollers by water 
power, not by hand, and so called his machine a “ Water Frame.” 
Four years later (1779), Samuel Crompton, an English weaver, 
ingeniously combined the best features of the “Jenny” and the 


IN TEXTILE INDUSTRY 467 

The thread was not satisfactory, however, for all parts of cloth Water 
manufacture ; but in 1775 Richard Arkwright, a barber and ped- power for 
dler, devised a new sort of spinner without spindles. He ran hand power 












468 


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 


The cotton 
gin and the 
supply of 
cotton 



‘‘Water Frameinto a new machine which he called “ the mule” 
— in honor of this mixed parentage. With “ the mule, ” one 
spinner could spin two hundred threads at a time. 

Now the weavers could not keep up. They were still using the 
hand loom, older than history. Threads were drawn out length- 


Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 
A Primitive Loom in use in Japan to-day. 

wise on a frame, so making the warp. Then the weaver drove 
his shuttle by hand back and forth between those threads with 
the woof (cross threads). But now (1784) Edmund Cartwright, 
a clergyman of the Church of England, patented a “ power loom,” 
in which the shuttle threw itself back and forth automatically; and 
by later improvements it became possible for one man to weave 
more cloth in 1800 than two hundred could in 1770. 

The next need was more cotton ready to spin. Eli Whitney, 
in America, met this by inventing his Cotton Gin, wherewith one 
slave could clean as much cotton fiber from the seed as three 
hundred had been able to clean before. At almost the same time 




















PLATE LXXXI 




Above. — Farm Tools in 1800. — There were none others except the 
wagon •— and the new and very rare (and very crude) threshing machine. 

Below. — Modern Plowing. — These two cuts suggest only faintly the 
change that a hundred years has worked in agriculture. The tractor, 
steam or gasoline, is an American invention. Note the width of the swath. 
The movement forward is far more rapid than any horse team can go 
with one plowshare. Note the comfort in which the men work. And the 
difference between the plows of 1800 and of 1900 is less striking than 
the difference between the amount of farm machinery then and now. 


















PLATE LXXXII 



Above. — Twentieth-century Spinning Machinery — which, with 
very little human labor, spins thousands of threads at once. 

Below. — A Modern Power Loom. 




















STEAM AND IRON 


469 


a way was found to bleach cloth swiftly, by chemicals, instead 
of slowly by air and sun as formerly. 

Then came James Watt to supply a new power to run The steam 
this new machinery. Before 1300, Roger Bacon had specu- en £* ne 
lated on the expansive power of steam as a motive power, 
and a nobleman of Charles I’s time constructed a steam 
engine that pumped water. Inventor and invention perished 



Courtesy of the Libi ary of Congress 


An Early Cotton Gin. 


in the Civil War that followed; 1 but, a hundred years later, 
steam engines began to be used in England to draw water 
out of flooded mines. These engines, however, had only an 
up-and-down movement; they were clumsy and slow; and 
they wasted steam and fuel. James Watt, an instrument- 
maker, was called upon to repair a model for such an engine, and 
became interested in removing these defects. By 1785, he 
had constructed engines that worked much more swiftly, eco¬ 
nomically, and powerfully, and which could transmit their power 
to wheels (and so drive machinery) by an arrangement of shafts 
and cranks. In 1785 steam was first used to drive spinning ma¬ 
chinery. Fifteen years later, there were more steam engines in 

1 George MacDonald’s St. George and St. Michael tells the story. 














470 


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 


Improve¬ 
ments in 
working iron 


England than water wheels, and four had found their way to 
America. 

One more series of inventions completed this wonderful circle 
of the eighteenth century. Engines and power machines could 
be built in a satisfactory manner only from iron; but the man¬ 
ufacture of iron was still slow and costly, and the product was 
poor stuff. In 1790, however, steam began to be used to furnish 
a new blowing apparatus which gave a steady blast of air, in place 
of the old bellows and like arrangements. This soon made pos¬ 
sible more rapid and more perfect work in iron. New and better 
ways, too, were found to change the brittle “castings” into mal¬ 
leable “wrought” iron. 

Thus, by 1800, the “ age of steam and iron” had begun in Eng¬ 
land, and to some degree in America. The continent of Europe 
was closed against it some years longer by Napoleon’s Continen¬ 
tal System. 


The 

steamboat 


The 

railway 


This is the convenient place to note two applications of the 
steam engine to locomotion, and also a few other inventions of 
the following half-century — as many in America now as in 
England. 

In America the chief need was to apply steam to locomotion, 
and first (with the tremendous distances and lack of roads) to 
locomotion by water. As early as 1787 James Rumsey of Virginia 
ran a steamboat on the Potomac, and at almost the same time 
John Fitch and Oliver Evans did the like on the Susquehanna 
at Philadelphia. But no one of these neglected and broken¬ 
hearted geniuses could find capital willing to back the invention. 
Some twenty years later, however, Robert Fulton was more for¬ 
tunate. 1 He secured money from Chancellor Livingstone of 
New York: and in 1807 his Clermont made its trial trip up the 
Hudson, 150 miles in 32 hours. 

Since steam could drive boats, why not coaches on land? 
Horse tramways had been used in England for many years to 
carry coal from a mine to a canal, and soon after 1800 a Cor- 

1 Fulton offered his invention first to Napoleon, as a means of transporting 
his waiting troops from Boulogne to England (p. 439). Happily, Napoleon 
thought him a faker. 



PLATE LXXXIII 




















PLATE LXXXIV 


•* 



1 





New York City, “down town”: Woolworth Building (right), Municipal Building (center), Brook¬ 
lyn Bridge (right), Manhattan Bridge (left), Brooklyn beyond East River. This official photo 
of the 'Air Service of the United States Army shows the effect of the use of steel in city architec¬ 
ture. 














SPREADS TO AMERICA 


471 


irishman used a stationary steam engine to furnish the power for 
a short tramway. But the problem was to get a traveling engine. 

In 1814 George Stephenson succeeded in building a “locomo¬ 
tive” able to haul coal carts on tramways, and in 1825 a pas¬ 
senger line (twelve miles long) was opened in England. In 1833 
a steam railway carried passengers from London to Liverpool 
in ten hours (a four-hour ride now), whereas the stage coach took 
sixty. The railway age had begun. 

And in many other ways, soon after 1800, mechanical inven- Other lead- 
tion began to affect life. From the beginning of George Wash- J^Hnven 
ington’s administration to 1812, the American Patent Office tions — to 
registered less than eighty new inventions a year. From 1812 1850 
to 1820 the number rose to about 200 a year, and in 1830 there 
were 544 new patents issued. Twenty years later the thousand 
mark was passed, and in 1860 there were five thousand. A like 
movement, if not quite so swift, was still taking place in England. 

These inventions mostly saved time or helped to make life more 
comfortable or more attractive. A few cases only can be men¬ 
tioned from the bewildering mass. The McCormick reaper (to 
be drawn by horses) appeared in 1831, and soon multiplied the 
farmer’s efficiency in the harvest field by twenty. (This re¬ 
leased many men from food-production, and made more possible 
the growth of cities and of manufactures.) Planing mills created 
a new industry in woodworking. “Colt’s revolver” (1835) re¬ 
placed the one-shot “pistol.” Iron stoves began to rival the 
ancient fireplace, especially for cooking. Friction matches, in¬ 
vented in England in 1827, were the first improvement on pre¬ 
historic methods of making fire. Illuminating gas, for lighting 
city streets, made better order possible at night, and helped im¬ 
prove public morals. In 1838 the English Great Western (with 
screw propeller instead of side paddles, and with coal to heat its 
boilers) established steam navigation between Europe and Amer¬ 
ica. The same year saw the first successful use of huge steam 
hammers, and of anthracite coal for smelting iron. In 1839 a 
Frenchman, Daguerre, began photography with his “ daguerreo¬ 
type.” Still earlier, a French chemist had invented the canning 







472 


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 


Bessemer 

steel 


Petroleum 


of foods. In 1841 Dr. Crawford W. Long first demonstrated the 
value of ether as an anesthetic, — an incomparable boon to suffer¬ 
ing men and women. The magnetic telegraph, invented in 1835, 
was made effective in 1844. The Howe sewing machine was 
patented in 1846; and the next year saw the first rotary printing 
press. 

The latest phases of the Industrial Revolution — which has* 
never ceased — will be noted when we reach the “ Age of Elec¬ 
tricity ”; but it is convenient to treat here two of the chief 
developments of the second half of the nineteenth century. 

1. The rapidly growing use of machinery called insistently 
for still better material than ordinary iron. Steel, an alloy of 
iron and carbon about midway in structure between cast iron 
and wrought iron, had been prized for centuries; but no way was 
known to produce it rapidly out of iron ore. The Bessemer 
process (invented in England) made steel available and relatively 
cheap. This invention gave a tremendous impulse to all forms 
of industry, transforming even the landscape, with our lofty 
“iron” [steel] bridges, and the exterior of our cities, with our 
modern “sky-scrapers.” 

2. Coal became the chief manufacturing fuel about 1800; 
but before the close of the nineteenth century its place in many 
industries was challenged by mineral oil, or petroleum. Min¬ 
eral oil had been known in small quantities, and was used as a 
liniment (“Seneca Oil”) before 1850. The first gushing oil 
well was discovered in western Pennsylvania in 1859, and the 
use of oil for light, heat, and power began. “To strike oil” 
soon became a byword for success — equivalent to a “ship come 
home” in the days of primitive commerce. Of recent years all 
the great industrial nations have been increasingly concerned 
about the future supply of this indispensable commodity, 
looking covetously toward the rich but undeveloped oil dis¬ 
tricts of Mexico, Roumania, and Mesopotamia. 


CHAPTER L 


THE REVOLUTION IN THE LIVES OF THE WORKERS 


With machinery and steam power, one laborer was soon 
able to produce more wealth than hundreds had produced by the 
old hand processes. This ought to have been pure gain for all 
the world, and especially it should have meant more comfort 
and more leisure for the workers. Part of the increased 
wealth did go, indirectly, to the common gain, in lower prices. 
Every one could soon buy cloth and hardware cheaper than be¬ 
fore the Industrial Revolution. But, even yet, the workers 
Aave failed to get their fair share of the world’s gain; and for 
many of them, while the Industrial Revolution was young, it 
meant, not higher life, but lower life. 

Under the “domestic system” (p. 366) all manufactures had 
been handmade (as the word “manufacture” signifies). Hours 
of labor were long and profits were small, because there was 
little surplus wealth to divide. But workmen worked in their 
own homes, under reasonably wholesome conditions. Their 
labor was varied. They owned their own tools. They had con¬ 
siderable command over their hours of toil. Their condition 
resembled that of the farmer of to-day more than that of the 
modern factory worker. Usually, too, the artisan’s home had 
its garden plot, from which he drew part of his living, and in 
which he could spend much labor profitably in a dull season for 
his trade. But the machinery of the new industrial age was 
costly. Workmen could not own it as they had owned their 
old tools. Nor did they know how to combine to own it in 
groups. It all passed into the hands of wealthy men, who hired 
workers (“operatives”) to “operate” it. This marks the be¬ 
ginning of a new organization of labor. As the old slave system 
gave way to serfdom in agriculture and to a gild organization 

473 


Workmen 
under the 
old “ do¬ 
mestic sys 
tern ” 


The new 

factory 

system 




474 


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 


The new 
“ capital¬ 
ist ” 


The new 
“ pro¬ 
letariat ” 


Cleavage 

between 

classes 


in manufactures, and as gilds gave way to the domestic system, 
so now the domestic system gave way to the present capitalist 
system, or wage system, or factory system. 

The capitalist manufacturer was a new figure in European 
life, appearing first in England, alongside the country gentlemen 
and the merchant princes. He was not himself a workman, like 
the old “master.” He was only an “employer.” He erected 
great factories, filled them with costly machines, bought the 
necessary “raw material” (cotton, wool, or iron, as the case 
might be), paid wages, and took the profits. 

And if the capitalist was a new figure in middle-class society, 
the capitalless and landless worker was a much more significant 
new figure in the “lower classes.” He now furnished nothing 
but his hands. Moreover, much of the work on the new ma¬ 
chinery could be done by women and children — especially in 
all cloth manufactures, where the work consisted largely in 
turning a lever, or tying broken threads, or cleaning machinery. 
Until the operatives learned how to combine, so as to bargain 
collectively, the capitalist could fix wages and hours and con¬ 
ditions as he pleased. 

The capitalist, too, had no personal contact with his workmen. 
He employed, not two or three, living in his own family, but 
hundreds or thousands, whose names even he did not know ex¬ 
cept on the payroll. There was no chance for understanding 
between him and his “hands.” Under the gild and domestic 
systems, apprentices and journeymen had expected to rise, 
sooner or later, to be “masters”; and at all times they lived 
on terms of constant intercourse with their masters, who 
worked side by side with them, and had a sort of fatherly 
guardianship over them. Under the new system, a particularly 
enterprising and fortunate workman might now and then 
rise into the capitalist class; but on the whole, a permanent 
line separated the two classes. 

These features of the capitalist system we still have with us. 
But another group of changes, less inevitable, were for a time ex¬ 
ceedingly disastrous. As the factory came in, the worker changed 
his whole manner of life for the worse. He had to reach 


AND CHILD LABOR 


475 


his place of work by sunrise or earlier, and stay there till sunset 
or dusk. So the employer built long blocks of ugly tenements near 
the factory for rent; and the workmen moved from their village 
homes, with garden spots and fresh air and varied industry, into 
these crowded and squalid city quarters. In 1750 England was 
still a rural country, with only five towns of more than 5000 
people. In 1801 more than a hundred towns counted 5000 
people, and the total population had nearly doubled. 

England was the first country to face the problems created 
by this rapid growth of city populations; and in England for 
a time no one saw these problems clearly. The employers, 
most directly responsible, felt no responsibility, and were en¬ 
gaged in an exciting race for wealth. The new cities grew up 
without water supply, or drainage, or garbage-collection. Sci¬ 
ence had not learned how to care for these needs, and law had 
not begun to wrestle with them. The masses of factory work¬ 
ers and their families dwelt in den-like garrets and cellars — a 
family stuffed indecently into a squalid unwholesome room or two 
— bordering on pestilential alleys, in perpetual filth and disease 
and misery and vice. In 1837 one tenth of the people of the 
great city of Manchester lived in cellars. 

Little better was the factory itself. Carpenters and masons 
commonly worked from sunrise to sunset — or even from dawn 
to dark —jnst as farm laborers often do still. Such long 
hours for toil were terribly hard: but they could be endured 
when spent in fresh air, amid out-door scenes, in interesting 
and varied activity. But this long labor day was now carried 
into the factory. There it was unendurable and ruinous, be¬ 
cause of foul air, poor light, nerve-racking noise of dangerous, 
limb-tearing machinery, the more monotonous character of 
factory labor — the workman spending his day in repeating 
over and over one simple set of motions, — and because there 
it crushed women and children. 

This was true even in America, when factories grew up there 
after 1815. Many years ago. Professor Ely of Wisconsin Uni¬ 
versity wrote (Labor Movement in America, 49): “ The length 
of actual labor [in 1832] in the Eagle Mill at Griswold [Connect- 


TenemenJ 

life 


Long hours 
and mo¬ 
notonous 
labor 


The long 
day 


Illustrations 
from Amer¬ 
ica in 1830 





476 


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 


Child 
slavery in 
England 


The 

beginnings 
of reform 


The “ let- 
alone ” 
theory of 
economics 


icut] was fifteen hours and ten minutes. The regulations at 
Paterson, New Jersey, required women and children to be at 
work at half-past four in the morning. . . . Operatives were 
taxed by the manufacturers for the support of churches. . . . 
Women and children were urged on by the use of the rawhide.” 

In England, conditions w~ere at first worse than this. Parish 
authorities had power to take children from pauper families and 
apprentice them to employers ; and dissolute parents sometimes 
sold their children into service by written contracts. In the 
years just before 1800, gangs of helpless little ones from six 
and seven years upwards, secured in this way by greedy con¬ 
tractors, were auctioned off, thousands at a time, into ghastly 
slavery. They received no wages. They were clothed in rags. 
They had too little food, and only the coarsest. They were 
driven to toil sixteen hours a day, in some places by inhuman 
tortures. They had no holiday except Sunday ; and their few 
hours for sleep were spent in dirty beds from wdiich other 
relays of little workers had just been turned out. Schooling 
or play there was none; and the poor waifs grew up — girls as 
well as boys — if they lived at all, amid shocking and brutal im¬ 
morality. 

In 1800 a terrible epidemic among children in factory districts 
aroused public attention; and Parliament “reduced” the hours 
of labor for children-apprentices to twelve a day. In 1819 and 
in 1831 laws were passed to shorten hours also for other child 
employees — who were supposed to be looked after by their 
parents. But these laws were ill-enforced ; and until after 1833 
(p. 520) the mass of factory children continued to be “ sad, de¬ 
jected, cadaverous creatures,” among whom at any great factory, 
said a careful observer, “ the crippled and distorted forms were 
to be counted by hundreds.” 1 

The revolution in work and in the workers’ lives brought with 
it a revolution in thought. A group of writers put into form 
a new doctrine about the production of wealth — which very 
largely replaced the old Mercantilist political economy. The 

1 Read Mrs. Browning’s Cry of the Children. 



PLATE LXXXV 




Above. -— Harvesting in 1831, with McCormick’s first successful horse 
reaper, — a tremendous advance upon the old hand sickle. (The self- 
binder had not yet been invented.) 

Below. — Harvesting To-day. A Mogul Kerosene Tractor pulling two 
McCormick reapers and binders with mechanical shockers. Two men 
do many times as much work as six with the earlier reaper. (Cf. also 
cuts facing p. 408.) 





















































AND SOCIALISM 


477 


leader of the new teaching was Adam Smith in England. His 
Wealth of Nations (published in 1776) taught that “laws” of 
“ supply and demand” were “ natural laws” in society, and could 
not be meddled with except to do harm. Prices and wages and 
all conditions of labor were to be regulated wholly by this “ law.” 
This would secure “ the greatest happiness of the greatest num¬ 
ber.” Government must keep hands off, unless called in as a 
policeman to keep order. 

This became known as the “Manchester doctrine,” because 
&o universal in that early center of manufactures. It is also called 
by a French name, — Laissez faire (“let it go”). English mer¬ 
chants, also, accepted it, in their hatred of the old restrictions 
upon trade; and it soon became almost a religion to the town 
middle class. It suited the strong and prosperous, but it was 
utterly unchristian in its corollary, “The devil take the hind¬ 
most.” It produced happiness for a few, and misery “for the 
greatest numbers.” The horrible conditions of the new factory 
towns were its first fruits. Some thinkers began to call this po¬ 
litical economy a “ dismal science, ” and, in search of a cure for 
social ills, to swing over to some form of socialism. 

The early socialists were moved by a deep love for humanity 
and by a passionate hatred for suffering and injustice, but they 
were not scientific thinkers. They believed that rich and poor 
could be induced by argument to set up a society of common 
goods and brotherly love, such as More had pictured in Utopia. 
Usually they thought that, in the new arrangement, society 
would be broken up into many small communistic units of a few 
hundred or a few thousand people each ; and one of the leaders, 
Robert Owen (a Welsh manufacturer), spent his fortune in es¬ 
tablishing model cooperative communities of that sort, as at 
New Harmony in Indiana. (All Owen’s settlements failed ; but 
his work gave a great impulse to the later cooperative societies.) 

Modern socialists look back upon these early efforts as well- 
meant efforts of dreamers, and trace their present doctrine to 
Karl Marx. Marx was born in 1818 in Germany. He attended 
the University of Berlin, and was intended by his family for a 
university professor; but his radical ideas kept him from obtain- 


Early 

socialism 


Marxian 

socialism 






478 


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



ing such a position. He began to publish his works on socialism 
about 1847. Germany and then France drove him away as a 
dangerous disturber of order; and he spent the last half of his 
life in England. 

Marx threw aside the idea that benevolent persons could in¬ 
troduce a new era of cooperation by agreement. He believed, 
however, that a new cooperative organization of society was 
going to succeed the present individualistic organization as in¬ 
evitably as that had followed the gild and slave organization, 


Steel Works in Pueblo, Colorado. 

through tendencies in economic development that could not be 
controlled. All history, he said, had been the story of class 
struggles. Ancient society was a contest between master and 
slave; medieval society, between lord and serf; present society, 
between capitalist and workers. The workers, he was sure, will 
win, when they learn to unite. 

Modern socialism points out that a few capitalists control the 
means of producing wealth. This, they argue, is the essential 
evil in industrial conditions. Their remedy is to have society step 
into the place of those few, taking over the ownership and man¬ 
agement (1) of natural resources (mines, oil wells, water power, 






AND SOCIALISM 


479 


etc.) ; (2) of transportation; (3) of all machinery employed in 
large-scale production. They do not wish to divide up property, 
or to keep individuals from owning houses, libraries, carriages, 
pictures, jewels, of their own. That is, they do not wish to 
abolish private ownership of the things we use to support life or 
to make life more enjoyable, but only of those things we use to 
produce more wealth. 

Unfortunately a large division of socialists have abandoned 
the ballot in favor of “ direct action.” By this they do not mean, 
most of them, bombs or bullets, but they do mean industrial com - 
pulsion of society through “ general strikes.” To succeed in this, 
they aim first to organize all workers in each great industry, un¬ 
skilled as well as skilled, into “one big union.” This program 
originated with the French “Syndicalists” a few years ago, and 
has been adopted by the “I. W. W.” in America. Society 
tends, naturally, to meet these threats of compulsion with harsh 
repression. However, the world congress of socialists in 1920 
(the “Second International”) distinctly repudiated these 
methods and clearly affirmed its faith in persuasion and the 
ballot. 

Students who pay any attention to socialism admit that its 
ideals are noble, and that it has rendered a real service by call¬ 
ing attention forcefully to cruel evils in our society. But the 
great majority of thinkers have little faith in its remedies, and do 
not believe that the socialist program would work as its ad¬ 
vocates teach. Most constructive thinkers hope to lessen the 
ills of society without surrendering private enterprise and in¬ 
dividual initiative to any such degree as the socialists think 
necessary. 


“ Direct 
action ” 


For Further Reading. — On the Industrial Revolution, — Slater’s 
The Making of Modern England, especially the introduction; Alsopp’s 
English Industrial History, Part IV; Byrn’s Progress of Invention; 
Kirkup’s History of Socialism. 







PART XII - CONTINENTAL EUROPE 
REARRANGED, 1848-1871 


The mid¬ 
dle-class 
monarchy 


Guizot’s 
policy of 
stagnation, 
1840-1848 


CHAPTER LI 

“THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS,” 1848 

I. IN FRANCE 

In France the divine-right monarchy, we have seen, gave 
way in 1830 to a constitutional monarchy. Louis Philippe 
(p. 463) liked to be called “the Citizen King.” He walked 
the streets in the dress of a prosperous shopkeeper, a green 
cotton umbrella under his arm, chatting cordially with pass¬ 
ers-by. He had little understanding , however, of the needs 
of France, or of the feelings of the masses below the shopkeeping 
class. For eighteen years (1830-1848) the favor of the middle 
class upheld his throne. Only the richest citizens shared in 
political power (p. 463); but the whole middle class held mili¬ 
tary power in the National Guards — to which no workingmen 
were admitted. 

In the legislature there were two main parties. Thiers (p. 462) 
led the more liberal one, which wished the monarch to be a 
figurehead, as in England; Guizot (p. 461), the conservative 
leader, wanted to leave the king the real executive, and to resist 
all further liberalizing of the government. (Both Guizot and 
Thiers were famous historians.) 

From 1840 to 1848, Guizot was chief minister. France was 
undergoing rapid industrial growth, and needed tranquillity 
and reforms. Guizot gave it tranquillity. His ministry was 
the most stable government that France had known since 
the days of Napoleon. But, in his desire for tranquillity, he 
opposed all reform. Proposals to reduce the enormous salt 

480 







FRANCE IN ’48 


481 


tax, to extend education, to reform the outgrown postal system, 
to improve the prisons, to care for youthful criminals, were 
alike suppressed. He kept France not so much tranquil as 
stagnant. 

Thus, after a time, the bright, brainy public men were nearly 
all driven into opposition. But Guizot could not be overthrown 
by lawful means. The franchise was too narrow; and (incor¬ 
ruptible and austere himself) he had organized the vast pat¬ 
ronage of the government for public corruption. Less than 
200,000 men could vote, and the government had 300,000 
offices to buy voters with. 1 At one time, half the legislature 
held considerable revenues at Guizot’s will. 

In the matter of political reform Thiers’ party asked only 
(1) to forbid the appointment of members of the legislature to 
salaried offices, and (2) to widen the franchise so that one man 
out of twenty could vote. Guizot smothered both proposals. 
Finally the Liberals began to appeal to that vast part of the 
nation that had no vote. They planned a series of mass meet¬ 
ings, to bring public opinion to bear on the legislature. 
Guizot forbade these meetings — and brought on a revo¬ 
lution. 

This “ Revolution of 1848” was the work of the class of factory 
workers that had been growing up, almost unnoticed by political 
leaders of either party. Until 1825, when the Industrial Revo¬ 
lution was fairly complete in England, it had not begun upon the 
continent. Cloth manufactures there were still carried on under 
the “domestic system.” But in the next ten years, 5000 power- 
looms were installed in French factories ; and in ten years more, 
the number had grown to 30,000. By 1845, a large factory 
population had grown up in cities like Bordeaux, Lyons, Tou¬ 
louse, and Paris. Moreover, more than the working class then 
in any other land, the alert, intellectually nimble French work¬ 
ingmen were influenced by the new socialism. Their chief 
spokesman was Louis Blanc , an ardent young editor, who 

1 The government appointed not only national officials (post officers, 
custom-house collectors, etc.) but also all local officers, like our county 
treasurers and city police. 


“ Place¬ 
men ” : 
organized 
corruption 

Narrow 

electorate 


The Lib¬ 
erals try to 
appeal to 
public 
opinion 


The new 
“socialism” 
among the 
workmen 
of Paris 





482 


SECOND FRENCH REVOLUTION 


The “ Feb 
ruary days ” 


The last of 
the Cape- 
tians 


The 

Provisional 
Government 
of 1848 


preached especially “the right to icork” Every man, he urged, 
had a right to employment. To insure that right, he wished 
the nation to establish workshops in different trades and give 
employment in them to .all who wdshed it and who could not 
get it elsewhere. (In the end, according to his plan, the workers 
would manage the workshops.) 

Blanc was an unselfish, high-minded man, moved by deep 
pity for the suffering masses; and his proposals were urged 
with moderation of word and style. But among his followers 
there were a few crack-brained enthusiasts and some criminally 
selfish adventurers; and large numbers of the workingmen had 
adopted phrases, not only about the “right to work,” but also 
about “the crime of private property,” as a sort of religious 
creed. This class was now T to appear as a political power. 

In 1848 the Liberals arranged a monster political demon¬ 
stration in Paris for February 22 — choosing that day in honor 
of the American celebration. At the last moment the gov¬ 
ernment forbade the meeting. The leaders obeyed and stayed 
away; but the streets were filled all day with angry crowds, 
shouting “Down with Guizot!” The National Guards, when 
called out to disperse the mob, themselves took up the cry. The 
next day Guizot resigned. 

Peace seemed restored; but that night a collision occurred 
between some troops and the mob ; and the Radicals seized the 
chance. The bodies of a few slain men were paraded through 
the poorer quarters of the city in carts, while fervid orators 
called the people to rise against a monarchy that massacred 
French citizens. By the morning of the 24th, the streets bristled 
with barricades and the mob was marching on the Tuileries. 
Louis Philippe fled to England, disguised as a “Mr. Smith.” 
The “February days” saw the end of the thousand-year old 
Capetian monarchy. 

The mob had taken up the cry for a republic. Before dis¬ 
persing, a few liberal members of the legislature had appointed 
a radical committee as a “Provisional Government” — with 
Lamartine, the poet-historian, as its guiding force. This body 
of course was to call a convention to make a new constitution; 




NATIONAL WORKSHOPS 


483 


but meantime it must govern France, and especially it must at 
once restore order, bury the dead, care for the wounded, and 
secure food for the great city, wherein all ordinary business had 
ceased, — all this with no police force at its call. 

The first session (begun while the mob was still flourishing 
bloody butcher-knives in the legislative hall) lasted sixty hours. 

One hundred thousand revolutionists still packed the street 
without, and “delegations” repeatedly forced their way in, 
to make wild demands. Said one spokesman : “ We demand the 
extermination of property and of capitalists; the instant estab¬ 
lishment of community of goods; the proscription of the rich, 
the merchants, those of every condition above that of wage- 
earners ; . . . and finally the acceptance of the red flag, to 
signify to society its defeat, to the people its victory, to all 
foreign governments invasion.” 

Lamartine grew faint with exhaustion and want of food. His 
face was scratched by a bayonet thrust. But his fine courage 
and wit and persuasive eloquence won victory. To help ap¬ 
pease the mob, however, the Government hastily adopted a 
number of radical decrees, writing them hurriedly upon scraps 
of paper and throwing them from a window to the crowd. One 
declared France a Republic. Another abolished the House of 
Peers. Still others established manhood suffrage, shortened 
the working day to ten hours, and affirmed the duty of the state 
to give every man a chance to work. 

A few days later, the decree recognizing the “right to work” The “ work- 
was given more specific meaning by the establishment of “na- shop army 
tional workshops” (on paper) for the unemployed. In the 
business panic that followed the Revolution, great numbers of 
men had been thrown out of work. The government now organ¬ 
ized these men in Paris, as they applied, into a “workshop 
army,” in brigades, companies, and squads, — paying full wages 
to all it could employ and a three-fourths wage to those obliged 
to remain idle. Over one hundred thousand men, many of 
them from other cities, were soon enrolled in this way; but, 
except for a little work on the streets, the government had no 
employment ready for such a number. The experiment was not 







484 


SECOND FRENCH REVOLUTION 


The new 
Assembly 


The Paris 
workmen 
crushed 


The Con¬ 
stitution of 
“ the 
Second 
Republic ” 


“ The 
Napoleonic 
bgend ” 


in any sense a fair trial of the socialistic idea: it was a way of 
keeping order and of feeding a destitute army of the unemployed. 

A new “ Constituent Assembly,” elected by manhood suffrage, 
met May 4. The Revolution, like that of 1830, had been con¬ 
fined to Paris. The rest of France had not cared to interfere 
in behalf of Louis Philippe, but it felt no enthusiasm for a re¬ 
public and it abhorred the “Reds” and the socialists. This, 
too, was the temper of the Assembly. It accepted the Revo¬ 
lution, but it was bent upon putting down the Radicals. Al¬ 
most its first work (after making military preparation) was to 
abolish the workshop army — without notice and without any 
provision for the absorption of the men into other employments. 
A conservative French statesman has styled this “a brutal, 
unjust, blundering end to a foolish experiment.” The men of 
the workshop army rose. They comprised the great body of the 
workingmen of Paris, and they were aided by their semi-mili¬ 
tary organization. The conflict raged for four days, — the 
most terrible struggle that even turbulent Paris had ever wit¬ 
nessed. Twenty thousand men perished; but in the outcome, 
the superior discipline and equipment of the Assembly’s troops 
crushed the socialists. Eleven thousand prisoners were slaugh¬ 
tered in cold blood or transported for life — another of those 
cruel and senseless “White Terrors” which develop bitter class 
hatreds. 

The Assembly now turned to its work of making a constitu¬ 
tion. The document was made public in November. It was 
not submitted to a popular vote. It provided for a legislature 
of one house, and for a four-year president, both to be chosen 
by manhood suffrage. A month later, Louis Napoleon, a nephew 
of Napoleon Bonaparte, was elected president of this “ Second 
French Republic” by an overwhelming majority. 

Napoleon’s political capital was his name. A group of bril¬ 
liant propagandists of whom, strangely enough, Thiers was 
chief, had created a “Napoleonic legend,” representing the rule 
of the First Napoleon as a period of glory and prosperity, broken 
only by wars forced upon France by the jealousy of other rulers. 
These ideas had become a blind faith for great masses in France. 


BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY 


485 



changes are coming.” A 

month later, the February painting by Carl Deutsch commemo- 
. . rates one of Napoleon’s ludicrous at- 

nsmg in Paris gave the tempts to arouse a rebellion in his favor 
signal for March risings in during the rule of Louis Philippe. After 

. . . . this “invasion,” he was kept in prison 

other lands. Mettermch f or some years. 

fled from Vienna hidden in 

a laundry cart; and all over Europe thrones tottered — except 
in stable free England on the west, and in stable despotic Russia 
and Turkey on the east. Within a few days, in Holland, Spain, 
Denmark, and Sweden, to save their crowns, the kings granted 
new constitutions and many liberties. In every one of the 
German states, large or small, the rulers did the like. So, too, 
in Italy in the leading states, — Sardinia, Tuscany, Rome, and 
Naples. In all these countries the administration passed for a 
time to the hands of liberal ministries pledged to reform. 


Louis Napoleon had long believed that he was destined to 
revive the rule of his family. Twice in the early years 
of Louis Philippe’s reign 
he had tried to stir up a 
Napoleonic revolution, 
only to become a laughing¬ 
stock to Europe. But 
now to the peasantry and 
the middle class, alarmed 
by the specter of social¬ 
ism, his name seemed the 
symbol of order. 


II. CENTRAL EUROPE 
IN ’48 


’Forty-eight was “the 
year of revolutions.” In 
January, Metternich, now 
an old man, wrote to a 
friend, “ The world is very 
sick. The one thing cer¬ 
tain is that tremendous 


The 
‘ March 
days ” in 
Central 
Europe 







486 


CENTRAL EUROPE IN ’48 


The Revolu¬ 
tion in the 
Austrian 
realms 


Race jeal¬ 
ousies aid 
autocracy 


The Hun¬ 
garian Re¬ 
public falls 


A . The Revolution in the Austrian Empire 

March 13, two weeks after the French rising, the students of 
the University of Vienna and the populace of the city rose in 
street riots, calling for a constitution. The emperor promised 
this and other reforms, and appointed a liberal ministry. 

But the Austrian Empire was a vast conglomerate. It included 
many peoples and several distinct states. The Austrians proper 
were Germans. They made the bulk of the inhabitants in the 
old duchy of Austria, and they were the ruling class elsewhere 
in the Empire. Still they made up less than one fourth of all 
the inhabitants. In Bohemia the hulk of the people were the na¬ 
tive Slavs (Czechs); and in the eastern half of the Empire, the 
Hungarians were dominant. Hungary itself , however, was also a 
conglomerate state. In its border districts, the Slav peoples 
(Croats, Serbs, Slavonians) made the larger part of the popula¬ 
tion. 

In Bohemia and Hungary the March risings were not merely 
for constitutional government but also for Bohemian and Hun¬ 
garian home rule. The emperor skillfully conciliated both 
states by granting constitutional governments with a large meas¬ 
ure of home-rule and the official use of their own languages 
(instead of German) ; and then he used the time so gained to 
crush national movements in Italy (pp. 489-490). 

He had no intention, however, of keeping his sworn promises, 
and race jealousy quickly played into his hand. The German Lib¬ 
erals dreaded Slav rule, especially in Bohemia, where many Ger¬ 
mans lived. Soon, disturbances there between the two races gave 
the emperor excuse to’ interfere; and, in July (the army now 
ready) the emperor replaced the constitution he had just given 
to Bohemia by military rule. Alarmed at this sign of reaction, 
the Radicals rose again in Vienna, and got possession of the 
city (October); but the triumphant army (recalled from Bo¬ 
hemia) captured the capital after a savage bombardment. Then 
absolutism was restored in the central government also. 

Hungary remained to be dealt with. Here, too, race jealous¬ 
ies aided despotism. The Slavs wanted independence from the 
Hungarians; and if they had to be subject at all, they preferred 



L-PA N 

























































































THE FRANKFORT ASSEMBLY 


487 


German rule from distant Vienna rather than Hungarian rule 
from Budapest. The Hungarians discovered that the emperor 
had been fomenting a rebellion of the Croats against them ; and 
accordingly they declared Hungary a republic, chose the hero 
Kossuth president, and waged a gallant war for full independ¬ 
ence. But the Tsar in accordance with the compact between 
the monarchs of the Holy Alliance, sent a Russian army of 
150,000 men to aid Austria, and Hungary was crushed (April- 
August, 1849). 

It remained only for Austria to reestablish her authority in 
Germany, which had been left for a time to the Liberals. 

B . In Germany 

Even Prussia in ’48 had its scenes of blood and slaughter. 
In Berlin, from March 13 to March 18, excited middle-class 
crowds thronged the streets; and on the last of these days, in 
some way never clearly understood, a sharp conflict took place 
with the troops. The army inflicted terrible slaughter on the 
unorganized citizens; but Frederick William IV was neither 
resolute enough nor cold-hearted enough to follow up his victory. 
To pacify the people, he sent into temporary exile his brother 
William, who had commanded the troops; and he took part 
in a procession in honor of the slain, wearing the red, gold, and 
black colors of the German patriots. Then he called a Prussian 
parliament to draw up a constitution, and declared his purpose 
to put himself at the head of the movement for German na¬ 
tional union. 

!' Meantime, a “people’s movement” for German unity had 
got under way. Early in March, prominent German Liberals 
! gathered at Heidelberg and called a German National Assembly; 
and May 18 at Frankfort the first representative Assembly of 
Germany came together. But unhappily even this gathering 
did not really represent the whole German people, but only 
a small middle class of “intellectuals.” The nobility — with a 
few rare exceptions — held wholly aloof, and the peasantry were 
too slavish to have any sympathy with the movement. 

The Assembly was made up, too, of pedants and theorists. 


The March 
Revolution 
in Prussia 


The 

Frankfort 

Assembly 


488 


CENTRAL EUROPE IN ’48 


The people’s 

movement 

fails 


The “ Hu¬ 
miliation of 
Olmiitz ” 


inexperienced in public affairs; and it wasted six precious 
months in debating a bill of rights — while all chance of win¬ 
ning rights was slipping away. Over all Germany the com¬ 
mercial class was growing hostile, because of the long-continued 
business panic; and the vacillating Prussian king had dissolved 
the new Prussian parliament he had called — giving to Prussia 
instead a very conservative “divine-right” constitution. In 
other German states, too, the rulers were overthrowing liberal 
ministries that had been set up in the March days. 

In October, the Frankfort Assembly took up the work of 
making a national constitution. It wrangled through the fall 
and winter (1) as to whether the new Germany should be a re¬ 
public or a monarchy, and (2) whether it should or should not 
include despotic Austria. Meantime Austria at last got her 
hands free, and announced bluntly that she would permit no 
union into which she did not enter (with all her non-German 
provinces). 

Then the Radicals gave up the impossible republic, and at last 
the Assembly decided for a consolidated “ German Empire,” of¬ 
fering the imperial crown to Frederick William of Prussia. But it 
was six months too late. The Prussian king felt a growing aver¬ 
sion to the movement which, a few months before, he had called 
“the glorious German revolution”; and, after some hesitation, 
he declined the crown “bespattered with the blood and mire 
of revolution.” In despair the Radicals then resorted to arms 
to set up a republic. They were promptly crushed; the Na¬ 
tional Assembly vanished in the spring of 1849; and many 
German Liberals, like Carl Schurz, fled, for their lives, to 
America. The “people’s” attempt to make a German nation 
had failed. 

Frederick William then put himself at the head of a half¬ 
hearted “league” of twenty-eight 'princes of North Germany. 
Austria insisted that this league dissolve. Austrian and Prus¬ 
sian troops met, but the Prussian army was ill-prepared; and 
finally Frederick William made ignominious submission in a 
conference at Olmiitz (November, 1850). Austria then restored 
the Germanic Confederation of 1815. 




FAILURE OF ITALIAN LIBERALS 


489 


C . The Revolution of ’48 in Italy 


Italy had been in fragments for more than thirteen hundred 
years — though there had always been ardent patriots to dream 
of a new Italian nation. Napoleon reduced the number of 
petty states somewhat; and when the European coalition was 
struggling with Napoleon, an English force landed at Genoa, 
with its flag inscribed “Italian Liberty and Independence.” 
At the same time Austrian proclamations announced to the 
Italians, “We come to you as liberators. . . . You shall be 
an independent nation.” 

The Congress of Vienna ignored these promises. Even the 
Napoleonic improvements were undone. Lombardy and Ve- 
netia became Austrian provinces (p. 449), and most of the rest 
of the peninsula was handed over to Austrian influence. Bour¬ 
bon rule was restored in the south over the Kingdom of the 
Two Sicilies. Dukes, dependent upon Austria, were set up in 
Tuscany, Modena, and Parma. Between these duchies and 
Naples lay the restored Papal States, with the government in 
close sympathy with Austria. True, the northwest was given 
back to the Kingdom of Sardinia under a native line of mon- 
archs, to whom the people were loyally attached; but even 
there until 1848 the government was a military despotism. 
“Italy,” said Metternich complacently, “is a mere geographical 
expression.” 

The story of the Italian revolutions of 1820 and the Holy 
Alliance has been told. In 1830, after the July Revolution 
in Paris, new revolutions broke out in the Papal States and the 
small duchies, but these movements also were soon put down 
by Austria. The ten years from 1830 to 1840, however, did see 
the organization of the widespread secret society, “Young 
Italy,” by Mazzini. Mazzini was a lawyer of Genoa and a 
revolutionary enthusiast who was to play, in freeing Italy, a 
part somewhat like that of Garrison and Phillips in preparing 
for the American Civil War. His words and writings worked 
wonderfully upon the younger Italians of the educated classes 
for a united Italian Republic. 

Thus when the revolutions of 1848 broke out, Italy was ready 


Italy and 
the Con¬ 
gress of 
Vienna 


“ Young 
Italy ” 




490 


ITALY IN ’48 


Italian 
revolutions 
in ’48 


Defeats at 
Custozza 
and Novara 


to strike. In 1820-1821, the extremities of the peninsula had 
been shaken; in 1830, the middle states; in 1848, there was 
no foot of Italian soil not convulsed; and this time the revolu¬ 
tionists sought union as ardently as freedom -. On the news of 
Metternich’s flight, Milan and Venice drove out their Austrian 
garrisons. Then Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, gave his 
people a constitution and put himself at the head of a movement 
to expel Austria. The pope and the rulers of Tuscany and 
Naples promised loyal aid. Venice and other small states 

in the north voted enthu¬ 
siastically for incorpora¬ 
tion into Sardinia. 

But the king of Naples 
was dishonest in his prom¬ 
ises ; and even the liberal 
and patriotic pope (Pius 
IX) was not ready to break 
fully with Austria. Ex¬ 
cept for a few thousand 
volunteer soldiers, Charles 
Albert got no help from 
Italy south of Lombardy; 
and, July 15, 1848, he 
was defeated at Custozza. 
Then the movement passed 
into the hands of the 
Radicals. Venice and 
Florence each set up a 
republic; and in February, 
1849, the citizens of 
Rome, led by Mazzini, drove away the pope and proclaimed 
the “ Roman Republic.” 

These republican movements succeeded, for the hour, only 
because Austria was busied in Bohemia and Hungary (p. 486). 
But soon a strong Austrian army was sent to Italy. Charles 
Albert took the field once more, but was defeated decisively 
at Novara (March, 1849); and Venice was captured in August 






MAZZINI 


491 


after gallant resistance. Louis Napoleon restored the pope to 
his Roman principality, and left a French garrison there for 
his protection during the next twenty years, to 1870. 

But, unlike Germany, Italy had failed only because of crush¬ 
ing interference from without; and the splendid attempt had 
proved that “United Italy ” had become the passionate faith 
of a whole people. 

This well-grounded faith for a free Italy, and for a free Europe, 
was finely spoken to the world by Mazzini, with splendid cour¬ 
age, in the very hour of discouraging defeat. Mazzini had 
barely escaped with his life; but in 1849, from his refuge in 
England, while less fortunate associates were dying in Italy on 
scaffolds and under tortures in dungeons, he uttered to the ex¬ 
ultant forces of reaction a clear-sounding challenge : 

“ Our victory is certain; I declare it with the profoundest 
conviction, here in exile, and precisely when monarchical 
reaction appears most insolently secure. What matters 
the triumph of an hour? What matters it that by con¬ 
centrating all your means of action, availing yourselves of 
every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and 
jealousies of race which yet for a while endure, and spread¬ 
ing distrust, egotism, and corruption, you have repulsed our 
forces and restored the former order of things ? Can you 
restore men's faith in it, or do you think you can long main¬ 
tain it by brute force alone, now that all faith in it is ex¬ 
tinct ? . . . Threatened and undermined on every side, can 
you hold all Europe forever in a state of siege ? ” 

For Further Reading on 1848. — Hazen’s Europe Since 1815, 
152-186. Andrews and Seignobos have good accounts; Phillips’ 
European History, 1815-1899, is excellent for 1848. 


Mazzini’s 
challenge to 
victorious 
reaction 





CHAPTER LII 


The shame 
of France: 
“ Napoleon 
the Little ” 


FROM THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS TO THE 
FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 

Except to the few men of faith, the risings of ’48 seemed to 
have been in vain. True, feudalism was at last gone forever, 
even from Austria, and the Holy Alliance was finally disrupted 
by the rivalry between Prussia and Austria. But in govern¬ 
ment, the “restoration” appeared complete. The Revolution 
had closed in Italy with Novara (March, 1849), in the Aus¬ 
trian realms with the fall of the Hungarian Republic (July, 1849), 
and in Germany with the “humiliation of Olmiitz” (November, 
1850). In France it was swiftly going, and was to disappear 
in 1851 (p. 493). For the next generation, interest on the con¬ 
tinent centered in three lands,— France, Italy, Germany. And 
of these only Italy made true progress. 

I. FRANCE: THE SECOND EMPIRE, 1852-1870 

In 1830 and in 1848, France had led liberal Europe; but 
for the next twenty years after she had crushed so bloodily the 
workingmen of Paris, her story is not inspiring. Louis Napo¬ 
leon, President of the Republic, was constantly at loggerheads 
with the Assembly. From the first, he plotted to overthrow the 
republican constitution — to which he had sworn fidelity — and 
to make himself master of France. The Assembly played into 
his hand. In 1849 it passed a reactionary law which disfran¬ 
chised a large part of the workingmen of the cities. After the 
law had been passed, Napoleon criticized it vehemently, so as to 
appear to the workingmen as their champion. At the same 
time, the discontent of the artisans made the middle class fear 
a revolution; and that class turned to Napoleon as the sole 
hope for order. Thus the chief elements in the state dreaded 
the approaching close of Napoleon’s presidency. 

492 




PLATE LXXXVI 



View of Paris, taken from the Louvre. The cathedral far to the left is Notre Dame. The Paris Pan¬ 
theon (with its dome) shows on the right. The central portions of old European cities (built up solidly 
before the age of Bessemer steel) rarely show “sky-scrapers.” Cf. cut facing p. 471 . 

































NAPOLEON’S COUP D’ETAT 


493 


The constitution forbade a reelection; and an attempt to 
amend this clause was defeated by the Assembly. Thus that 
body had now seriously offended both the artisan class and the 
middle class, and Napoleon could overthrow it with impunity. 
All important offices were put into the hands of his tools and 
his trusted friends ; and on December 2, 1851 , he carried out the 
most striking coup d’etat in all French history. 

During the preceding night, some eighty men whose oppo¬ 
sition was especially feared — journalists, generals, and leaders 
in the Assembly — were privately arrested and imprisoned; 
and all the printing offices in the city were seized by Napoleon’s 
troops. In the morning the amazed people found the city 
posted with startling placards announcing the dissolution of the 
Assembly and the establishment of a new government with 
Napoleon at its head. The Assembly tried to meet, but was 
dispersed. During the following days a few Radicals began to 
raise barricades here and there in the streets; but these were 
carried by the troops with pitiless slaughter; batches of prisoners 
were shot down after surrender; the Radical districts of France 
were put under martial law; and thousands of men were trans¬ 
ported to penal settlements, virtually without trial. 

A few days later, the country was invited to vote Yes or No 
upon a new constitution making Napoleon president for ten 
years with dictatorial power. France “ ratified ” this proposal by 
a vote of seven and a half millions out of eight millions; and 
in November of 1852, a nearly unanimous vote made the daring 
adventurer Emperor of the French , under the title Napoleon III. 
(The Bonapartists counted the son of Napoleon I as Napoleon 
II, though he never reigned.) 

The “Second Empire” was modeled closely upon that of 
Napoleon I. During its early years, political life was suspended. 
The people, it is true, elected a Legislative Chamber, but that 
body could consider no bill that had not been put before it by 
the Emperor and his Council. Its function was merely to 
register edicts. 

At the election of a “legislature,” too, the government pre¬ 
sented for every position an “official candidate,” for whom 


The coup 
d'etat 


Ratified by 
France 


“ Elec¬ 
tions ” 
under the 
Empire 







494 


SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 


No personal 
liberty 


Napoleon 
accepted by 
France 

Because of 
“ pros¬ 
perity ” 


the way was made easy. Opposing candidates could not 
hold public meetings, nor hire the distribution of circulars. 
They were seriously hampered even in the use of the mails, and 
their placards were torn down by the police, or industriously 
covered by the official bill-poster for the government candidate. 

The ballot boxes, too, were su¬ 
pervised by the police. More¬ 
over Napoleon subsidized a 
large number of newspapers, 
and suppressed all that were 
unfavorable to him. 

Personal liberty, also, was 
wholly at the mercy of the 
government. The servants of 
prominent men were likely to 
be the paid spies of the police. 
Under the “Law of Public 
Security” (1858), Napoleon 
could legally send “suspects,” 
without trial, to linger through 
a slow death in tropical penal 
colonies (as he had been doing 
illegally before). 

Still Napoleon seems honestly to have deceived himself into 
the belief that he was “a democratic chief.” His government, 
he insisted, rested upon manhood suffrage in elections and 
plebiscites. In partial recompense for loss of liberty, too, he 
gave to France great material progress. Industry was en¬ 
couraged. Leading cities were rebuilt upon a more magnificent 
scale; and Paris, with widened streets, shaded boulevards, 
and glorious public buildings, was made the most beautiful 
capital in the world. Asylums and hospitals were founded; 
schools were encouraged, and school libraries were established; 
and vast public works throughout the Empire afforded employ¬ 
ment to the working classes. France secured her full share of 
the increase of wealth and comfort that came to the world so 
rapidly during those years. The pity is that France was 



‘France is Tranquil” (a favorite 
phrase with Napoleon III). A 
cartoon from Harper's Magazine. 












NEW WARS 


495 


bribed to accept the despicable despotism of Napoleon by this 
prosperity — and by the tinsel sham of “ glory ” in war. 

In 1852 Napoleon had declared, “The Empire is Peace”; 
but, in order to keep the favor of the army and of the populace 
by reviving the glories of the First Empire, he was impelled to 
war. For forty years, — ever since the fall of Napoleon I,— 
Europe had been free from great wars. Napoleon III rein¬ 
troduced them, and for a time his victories dazzled France, 
especially in the Crimean and the Italian wars. 

1. In 1854 Russia and Turkey were at war in the Black Sea. 
Through Napoleon’s intrigues, France and Britain joined 
Turkey. The struggle was waged mainly in Crimea, and took 
its name from that peninsula. Russia was defeated. No im¬ 
portant permanent results were achieved; but Napoleon gath¬ 
ered representatives of all the leading Powers at the Congress 
of Paris to make peace, and France seemed again to have become 
the arbiter in European politics. 

2. In 1859 Napoleon joined the Kingdom of Sardinia in a war 
against Austria to free Italy. He won striking victories at 
Magenta and Solferino, near the scene of the early triumphs 
of the First Napoleon over the same foe,— and then he made 
unexpected peace, to the dismay and wrath of the half-freed 
Italians. For his pay, Napoleon forced Italy to cede him the 
provinces of Nice and Savoy (pp. 424, 449). 

But the second half of Napoleon’s rule was a series of humilia¬ 
tions and blunders. (1) Napoleon favored the Southern Con¬ 
federacy in the American Civil War, and repeatedly urged 
Britain, in vain, to unite with him in acknowledging it as an 
independent state. (2) In 1863 he entered upon a disastrous 
scheme to overthrow the Mexican Republic and to set up as 
“Emperor of Mexico” his protege, Maximilian, an Austrian 
prince, brother of the Austrian Emperor. Napoleon expected 
to secure a larger share of the Mexican trade for France, and to 
forward a union of the Latin peoples of Europe and America, 
under French leadership. His act was a defiance of the Monroe 
Doctrine of the United States, but his purpose seemed trium- 


And mili¬ 
tary glory 


The 

Crimean 
War, 1854-6 


The Italian 
War of 1859 


Blunders in 
Napoleon’s 
later foreign 
policy 





496 


ITALY IS MADE 


Victor Em¬ 
manuel II 


Cavour 


phant until the close of the American Civil War. Then the 
government of the United States demanded the withdrawal of 
the French troops from Mexico. Napoleon was obliged to 
comply. (Soon afterwards Maximilian was overthrown by 
the Mexicans, captured, and shot.) (3) More serious still 
were a number of checks in Napoleon’s attempts on the Rhine 
frontier. That story will be told a little later. 

II. THE MAKING OF ITALY, 1849-1861 

Meantime Italy had been made. The night after Novara 
(p. 490), Charles Albert abdicated the crown of Sardinia, and his 
son, Vidor Emmanuel II, became king. The young prince was an 
intense patriot. A popular story told how, as he rallied his 
shattered regiment at the close of the fatal day of Novara, and 
withdrew sullenly from the bloody field, covering the retreat, 
he shook his clenched fist at the victorious Austrian ranks with 
the solemn vow,— “By the Almighty, my Italy shall yet be!” 

The new king was put at once to a sharp test. His father 
had given to the kingdom a liberal constitution (p. 490). Aus¬ 
tria demanded that Victor abolish it. If he would do so, he 
could have easy terms of peace, with Austrian military support 
against any revolt. At the same time the inexperienced Sar¬ 
dinian parliament was embarrassing him by foolish opposition 
and criticism. Victor Emmanuel nobly refused the Austrian 
bribe, and had to submit to severe terms from Austria and a 
heavy indemnity. But a frank appeal to his people for sup¬ 
port gave him a new loyal parliament, which ratified the 
peace, and his conduct won him the title of “the Honest King.” 

Austria, which Sardinia wished to expel from Italy, had 
37,000,000 people. Sardinia was poor and had only 5,000,000 
people. The king and his great minister, Cavour, bent all 
energies to strengthening Sardinia for another struggle and to 
securing allies outside Italy. Victor Emmanuel was a soldier. 
Cavour was the statesman whose brain was to guide the mak¬ 
ing of Italy. The king’s part was loyally and steadily to sup¬ 
port him. Exiles and fugitive Liberals from other Italian states 
were welcomed at the Sardinian court and were often given high 





CAVOUR 


497 



office there, so that the government seemed to belong to the whole 
1 peninsula . Cavour carried through the parliament many social 
reforms; and, in 1854, he sent a small but excellent Sardinian 
army to assist the allies against Russia in the Crimean War 
(p. 495). Many friendly Liberals condemned this last act as 
immoral. But Cavour 
at least had a political 
reason. He wished to 
prove that Sardinia 
was a military power, 
and to win a place for 
her in European confer¬ 
ences. 

At the Congress of 
Paris in 1856 (p. 495) 
this policy bore fruit. 

Cavour sat there in full 
equality with the rep¬ 
resentatives of the Great 
Powers; and, despite 
Austria’s protests, he 
secured attention for a 
convincing statement of 
the needs of Italy. 

Upon all minds he impressed forcefully that Italian unrest could 
never cease , nor European peace be secure, so long as Austria re¬ 
mained in the peninsula . 

Three years later this diplomatic game was won. As a young 
man, Louis Napoleon had been involved in the plots of 1830 for 
Italian freedom. Cavour now drew him into a secret alliance. 
In return for a pledge of Nice and Savoy, which had once been 
French, Napoleon promised to come to the aid of Sardinia if 
Cavour could provoke Austria into beginning a war. 

Austria played into Cavour’s hand by demanding, as a war 
ultimatum, that Italy reduce her army. Napoleon at once 
entered Italy, declaring his purpose to free it “from the Alps 
to the Adriatic.” His victories of Magenta and Solferino 


Cavour. — From Desmaison’s lithograph. 


And the 
Crimean 
War 


Cavour at 
the Con¬ 
gress of 
Paris 


The French 
alliance 


Sardinia 

absorbs 

Lombardy 




498 


ITALY IS MADE 


Sardinia ab¬ 
sorbs the 
duchies 


Garibaldi 
adds South 
Italy 


(p. 495) drove Austria forever out of Lombardy, which was 
promptly incorporated into Sardinia. This was the first step in 
the expansion of Sardinia into Italy. The population of the 
growing state had risen at a stroke from five millions to eight. 
Venetia remained in Austria's hands, but Napoleon suddenly 
made peace. He had no wish that Italy should be one strong, 
consolidated nation ; and he began to see that a free Italy would 
be a united Italy. 

The Italians felt that they had been betrayed by “the in¬ 
famous treaty”; 1 but more had already been accomplished 
than the mere freeing of Lombardy. At the beginning of the 
war, the peoples of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany had driven 
out their dukes (dependents of Austria), and voted for incorpo¬ 
ration in Sardinia. At the peace, Napoleon had promised Austria 
that the dukes should be restored, but he had stipulated that 
Austria should not use force against the duchies. For eight 
months this situation continued, wdiile Cavour played a second 
delicate diplomatic game with Napoleon, finally persuading 
him to leave the matter to a plebiscite. In March, 1860, 
the three duchies by almost unanimous vote declared again 
for annexation. This was the second step in expansion , — and 
the first example in Europe of “self-determination,” as we now 
use the phrase. Sardinia was enlarged once more by one th’ r d. 
It had now become a state of eleven million people. 

The next advance was due in its beginning to Garibaldi (a 
gallant republican soldier in the Revolution of 1848), who had 
now given his allegiance loyally to Victor Emmanuel. In 
May, 1860, Garibaldi sailed from Genoa with a thousand red- 
shirted fellow-adventurers, to arouse rebellion in Sicily. 
Cavour thought it needful to make a show of trying to stop the 
expedition; but Garibaldi landed safely, won Sicily and South 
Italy almost without bloodshed, and, with universal acclaim, 
proclaimed Victor Emmanuel “King of Italy.” 

By this third step, “Sardinia” had expanded into “Italy,” 
with a population of twenty-two millions. In February of 

1 Read James Russell Lowell’s Villafranca , to get an idea of the wrath of 
freedom-loving men at Napoleon’s betrayal. 





CAVOUR AND GARIBALDI 


499 


1861 the first “Italian parliament” met at Turin and enthusias¬ 
tically confirmed the establishment of the “Kingdom of Italy.” 
Cavour’s statesmanship was triumphant. Five months later, 
the great minister was 
dead, broken down by the 
terrible strain of his work. 

His last words were, “ Italy 
is made — all is safe.” 

Rome, with some ad¬ 
joining territory remained 
the dominion of the pope ; 
and Venetia was still Aus¬ 
trian. The acquisition 
of these two provinces by 
Italy was intertwined with 
the making of Germany. 

For Further Reading. — 

Bolton King’s Italian Unity 
is the best single work. Good 
accounts will be found in 
Probyn’s Italy, Bolton King’s 
Mazzini , Dicey’s Victor Em¬ 
manuel, or Thayer’s Ca- 
vour. Hayes, Hazen, Andrews, Seignobos, all contain brief treat¬ 
ments. 

Exercise. — Trace the expansion of Sardinia on map facing p. 632. 

Special Report. — Garibaldi’s life and adventures. 

III. THE MAKING OF GERMANY, 1861-1871 

Napoleon III ruled France for some twenty years. During 
the first ten years, Cavour made the Kingdom of Italy. Dur- 

1 Joseph Garibaldi (1807-1882) had been active in the plots of secret so¬ 
cieties against Austrian rule before 1830. When the revolutions of that 
year failed, he escaped to South America, to fight for liberty in various 
struggles in that continent. ’Forty-eight called him back to Italy, where he 
fought, beside Mazzini, for a Roman republic. Fleeing to New York, he 
earned a living for some years as a candle-maker. He came back to 
Italy to fight for freedom in the war of 1859 and the text tells his famous 
exploit of 1860. Ten years later he fought for France against Prussian con¬ 
quest (p. 544), and then spent the remaining years of his life on a small 
country estate. The photograph pictures him in this closing period. 



Garibaldi . 1 


William I of 
Prussia 






500 


MAKING OF GERMANY 


The Prus¬ 
sian army 
system 


Neglected, 

1815-1861 


ing the next ten, Bismarck, by far less justifiable methods, was to 
make a German Empire. 

“’Forty-nine” had shown Prussia as the only nucleus in that 
day for a German nation; and even from Prussia nothing could 
be expected as long as Frederick William IV reigned. But in 
1861 that king was succeeded by his brother, William I. This 
was the prince who had been banished for a time in 1848 to 
satisfy the Liberals (p. 487). That party had nicknamed him 
“Prince Cartridge,” He was a conservative of the old school, 
and he had bitterly opposed the mild constitutional concessions 
of his brother. But he had tingled with indignation at the 
humiliation of Olmiitz ; and he hoped with all his heart for Ger¬ 
man unity. He believed that this unity could be made only 
after expelling Austria from Germany. To expel Austria would 
be the work of the Prussian army. 

The Prussian army differed from all others in Europe. Else¬ 
where the armies were of the old class, — standing bodies of 
mercenaries and professional soldiers, reinforced at need by 
raw levies from the population. The Napoleonic wars had 
resulted in a different system for Prussia. In 1807, after Jena, 
Napoleon had required Prussia to reduce her army to forty- 
two thousand men. The Prussian government, however, had 
evaded Napoleon’s purpose to keep her weak, by passing fresh 
bodies of Prussians through the regiments at short intervals. 
Each soldier was given only two years’ service. Part of each 
regiment was dismissed each year and its place filled with 
new levies. These in turn took on regular military discipline, 
while those who had passed out were held as a reserve. 

After the Napoleonic wars, Prussia kept up this system. 
The plan was to make the entire male population a trained 
army, but it had not been fully followed up. Since 1815, 
population had doubled, but the army had been left upon the 
basis of that period. No arrangements had been made for or¬ 
ganizing new regiments; and so many thousand men each year 
reached military age without being summoned to the ranks. 

King William’s first efforts were directed to increasing the 
number of regiments so as to accommodate 60,000 new recruits 



WILLIAM I AND BISMARCK 


501 


each year. To do this required a large increase in taxes. But 
the Prussian parliament (Landtag) was jealous of military powder 
in the hands of a sovereign hostile to constitutional liberty, 
and it resolutely refused money. Then William found a min¬ 
ister to carry out his will, parliament or no. 

This man, who was to be the German Cavour, was Otto von 
Bismarck. Thirteen years earlier, Count Bismarck had been 
known as a grim and violent leader of tKe “Junkers,” the ex¬ 
treme conservative party made up of young landed aristocrats. 
When he was announced as the head of a new ministry, the 
Liberals ominously prophesied a coup d’etat. Something like a 
coup d’etat did take place. William stood steadfastly by his 
minister; and for four years Bismarck ruled and collected taxes 
unconstitutionally. Over and over again, the Landtag de¬ 
manded his dismissal, and the Liberals threatened to hang 
him, — as very probably they would have done if power had 
fallen to them by another revolution. Bismarck in turn railed 
at them contemptuously as “mere pedants,” and told them 
bluntly that the making of Germany was to be “a matter not 
of speechifying and parliamentary majorities, but of blood and 
iron.” For years he grimly went on, muzzling the press, 
bullying or dissolving parliaments, and overriding the national 
will roughshod. 

Meantime, the army was greatly augmented, so that practi¬ 
cally every able-bodied Prussian became a soldier with three 
years’ training in camp. First of any large army, too, this new 
Prussian army was supplied with the new invention of breech¬ 
loading repeating rifles, instead of the old-fashioned muzzle- 
loaders ; and Von Moltke, the Prussian “chief of staff, made it 
the most perfect military machine in Europe. 

From the first, Bismarck intended that this reconstructed 
army should expel Austria from Germany and force the princes 
of the rest of Germany into a true national union. It had not 
been possible for him to avow his purpose ; but time was growing 
precious, and he began to look anxiously for a chance to use his 
new tool. By a series of master-strokes of unscrupulous and dar¬ 
ing diplomacy, he brought on three wars in the next seven years. 


Otto von 
Bismarck 


The army 
reorganized 


Bismarck’s 
“ trilogy ” 
of wars 




502 


MAKING OF GERMANY 


The Danish 
War of 1864 


The War 
with Austria 
(Six Weeks’ 
War) in 
1866 


The Franco- 
Prussian 
War, 1870-1 


1. Taking advantage of an obscure dispute, he induced Aus¬ 
tria to join in seizing from Denmark the duchies of Sleswig and 
Holstein — to which neither robber state had the shadow of a 
claim. 

2. He then forced Austria into war by insisting brazenly 
upon keeping all the booty for Prussia — although the German 
Diet almost unanimously declared war against Prussia as "‘the 
wanton disturber of Ihe national peace.” In three days the 
Prussian army seized Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony, and in three 
weeks it crushed Austria at Sadowa in Bohemia. Prussia then 
consolidated her scattered territory by annexing Hesse, Hanover, 
Nassau, and Frankfort, along with Sleswig-Holstein. This 
raised her population to 30,000,000 (cf. maps after pp. 402, 502). 
Moreover, Austria was compelled to withdraw wholly from 
German affairs — in which Prussia was left without a rival — 
and the Confederation of 1815 was replaced by two federations. 
The first was the North German Confederation — not a loose 
league but a true federal state with much the same constitution 
as the later German Empire. The second was made up of four 
South German states (Bavaria and Wiirttemberg the principal 
ones), organized like the old Confederation — of which indeed 
it was a survival. 

3. To fuse these two German leagues into one was the main 
purpose of Bismarck’s third war. Before both the preceding 
struggles Bismarck had tricked Louis Napoleon into giving him 
a free hand — allowing Napoleon “to deceive himself” with the 
expectation that Prussia would permit France to annex Rhine 
territory in compensation for Prussia’s gains. Napoleon now 
wrote to Bismarck, suggesting that France annex part of 
Bavaria. Bismarck was already planning war with France, 
and this proposal delivered Napoleon into his hands. He 
revealed it privately to the South German states, and it terrified 
them into a secret alliance with Prussia. Then Bismarck hurried 
on the clash with France with characteristic craft, not hesitating 
even to use practical forgery. 1 

After all, however, Bismarck’s trickery succeeded only be- 
1 See Grant Robertson’s Bismarck. 






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“BLOOD AND IRON” 


503 


cause of the folly and envy of the rulers of France. French 
militarism looked with jealousy upon the rise of a German na¬ 
tion ; and Napoleon was bent desperately upon retrieving his 
tottering reputation by dazzling victories. Thus Bismarck 
found it possible to irritate the French government into declar¬ 
ing war (July 19, 1870). 

True, a few French statesmen had kept their heads, declaring 
that France was not ready for war. But Napoleon’s war-min¬ 
ister answered such objections by the boast, “We are thrice 
ready, down to the last soldier’s shoestring ” ; and France, which 
for centuries had never been beaten by one foe, shouted light- 
heartedly, “On to Berlin.” The first attempts to move troops, 
however, showed that the French government was honey¬ 
combed with corruption and inefficiency. 

Marked, indeed, was the contrast between this French in¬ 
efficiency and the “ German efficiency,” now revealed to Europe. 
Twelve days after the declaration of war (x\ugust 1), Germany 
had massed one and a quarter million of trained troops on the 
Rhine. The world then had never seen such perfection of mili¬ 
tary preparation. Carlyle wrote, “It took away the breath of 
Europe.” The Prussians won victory after victory. One of 
the two main French armies — 173,000 men — was securely 
shut up in Metz; September 2, the other, of 130,000 men, was 
captured at Sedan , with Napoleon in person ; 1 and the Prussians 
pressed on to the siege of Paris. 

Out of the war clouds emerged a new German Empire. In 
the preceding war, after Sadowa, Bismarck suddenly found 
himself the idol of the Prussian Liberals who had been reviling 
and opposing him. When military autocracy had apparently 
proved profitable, they abandoned their old opposition to it. 
So now all Germany. The South-German peoples went wild 
with enthusiasm for Prussia. By a series of swift treaties, while 
this feeling was at its height, Bismarck brought them all into the 
North German Confederation. Then he arranged that the king 
of Bavaria and other leading German rulers should ask King 

1 Napoleon remained a prisoner of war for a few months, and soon after¬ 
ward died in England. 


The arro¬ 
gance and 
inefficiency 
of Napo¬ 
leon’s gov¬ 
ernment 


“ German 
efficiency ” 
surprises 
the world 


The German 
Empire 






504 


MAKING OF GERMANY 


Bismarck’s 
methods: 
the moral 
question 


William to take the title of German Emperor. And on January 
18, 1871, while the siege of Paris was still going on, in the 
ancient palace of French kings at Versailles, William solemnly 
assumed that title. 



Proclamation of the German Empire. — From the painting by Von Wer¬ 
ner. Compare with the humiliation of the German envoys in the same 
place forty years later, when that Empire, born of war, had been de¬ 
stroyed by another war of its making; see Plate CX. 

Germany had been made not merely by “blood and iron ,” but 
also by fraud and falsehood. One can hardly tell the story of 
such gigantic audacity and successful trickery without seem¬ 
ing to glorify it. Bismarck did not work for low or personal 
ends. The national union which he made had to come before 
the German people could reach the best elements of modern 
life. But he sought his end by base means. His methods were 
distinctly meaner than Cavour’s; and his success tended to 
lower the tone of morality among nations. “Treaties,” he 
said, “are scraps of paper” ; and again, “when Prussia’s power 
is in question I know no law.” His policy of fraud and violence, 
too, while successful at the moment, left Germany troubled 
with burning questions, and burdened with the crushing weight 
of militarism and with the rule of the police and the drill ser¬ 
geant in private life (pp. 560-563). In his hate for democracy 
and in his contempt for international morality, he started the 







THE FRANCO—PRUSSIAN WAR 


505 


new Empire upon the road which, forty years later, plunged it 
into the abyss. 

Bismarck’s wars at least brought permanent good to Italy. 
That country was allied to Prussia in the “Six Weeks’ War,” 
and the treaty of peace gave her Venetia. Then at the out¬ 
break of war in 1870, Napoleon was obliged to withdraw his 
garrison from Rome (p. 491). Victor Emmanuel’s troops at 
once marched into the ancient capital, and the Roman citizens 
ratified this consummation of the union of Italy by an al¬ 
most unanimous vote. 

The later story of France and Germany can he best understood 
after studying the growth of constitutional government in England. 

For Further Reading. — Hazen, Europe Since 1815, 240-306. 
Robertson’s Bismarck, and his Germany from 1815 to 1889, are excellent. 


Italy wins 
Rome in 
1870 





Political 
retrogres¬ 
sion of the 
eighteenth 
century 


“ Virtual 
representa¬ 
tion ” 


PAET XIII — ENGLAND, 1815-1914: REFORM 
WITHOUT REVOLUTION 

England in the nineteenth century served as a 'political model for Europe. 
The English developed constitutional monarchy, parliamentary government, 
and safeguards for personal liberty. Other nations have only imitated 
them . — Seignobos. 


CHAPTER LIII 

THE “FIRST REFORM BILL,” 1832 

In the eighteenth century, we have seen, England acquired a 
world-empire and gave the world the Industrial Revolution. 
But, in political matters, that century was singularly uninterest¬ 
ing. Except for accidental progress in the matter of ministerial 
government (p. 383 ff.), England actually went backward 
politically. Parliament had never been democratic in make-up, 
and, after 1688, it shriveled up into the selfish organ of a small 
class of landlords. 

Ireland sent 100 members to the House of Commons, and 
Scotland 45. Each of the 40 English counties, large or small, 
sent two. The remaining four hundred came from “parlia¬ 
mentary boroughs” in England and Wales. The old kings had 
summ ned representatives from whatever boroughs they 
pleased; but a borough which had once sent representatives 
had the right, by custom, to send them always afterward. At 
first the power to “summon” new boroughs was used wisely to 
recognize new towns as they grew up. But the Tudor monarchs, 
in order better to manage parliaments, had summoned repre¬ 
sentatives from many little hamlets — “ pocket boroughs,” 
owned or controlled by some lord of the court party. 

506 























PLATE LXXXVIII 



Humors of a Country Election, — the third of a series of four plates 
of that name by Hogarth (plate after p. 384) in 1755, just after a bitterly 
contested election. The present scene represents the polling at a late 
stage. The English franchise was as fantastic as it was limited, — com¬ 
plicated by ancient customs. (Thus Weymouth, with only a few score 
voters in all, had twenty, some of them paupers, whose right came from 
a claim to share in a sixpence part of the rent of some ancient village 
property!) The blind and maimed from the almshouse are being brought 
to the polls. The voter in the foreground is plainly an imbecile and un¬ 
able to walk. Over his shoulder the man in a cocked hat and laces is 
trying to recall to him the name of his candidate. Somewhat in the back¬ 
ground we have a symbolic representation of Britannia in her broken- 
down coach of state, helpless, while coachman and footman gamble at 
cards. 

With all this keen satire, Hogarth was a true lover of beauty. This 
plate, spite of its ugly theme, has a lovely setting and many gracious lines. 










EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CONDITIONS 


507 


This had condition was made worse by natural causes. In Eliza¬ 
beth’s time the south of England, with its fertile soil and its 
ports on the Channel, had been the most populous part; but 
in the eighteenth century, with the growth of manufactures, 
population shifted to the coal and iron regions of the north and 
west, where great cities grew up, like Birmingham, Bradford, 
Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield. And these new towns 
had no representation in Parliament. 

Conditions had become unspeakably unfair and corrupt. 
Dunwich was under the waves of the North Sea, which had 
gradually encroached upon the land. But a descendant of an 
ancient owner of the soil possessed the right to row out with 
the sheriff on election day and choose himself as representative 
to Parliament for the submerged town. Old Sarum was once a 
cathedral city on the summit of a lofty hill; but new Sarum, 
or Salisbury, a few miles away on the plain, drew the population 
and the cathedral to itself until not a vestige of the old town 
remained. Then the grandfather of William Pitt bought the 
soil where Old Sarum had stood, and it was for this “ pocket 
borough” that the great Pitt entered Parliament. So, Gatton 
was a park, and Corfe Castle a picturesque ruin,—each with 
a representative in Parliament. Bosseney in Cornwall had 
three cottages. It had, however, nine voters, eight of them in 
one family; and these voters elected two members to Parlia¬ 
ment. On the other hand, Portsmouth, with 46,000 people, 
had only 103 voters. 

In the many small “pocket boroughs,” the few voters, de¬ 
pendent upon a neighboring landlord, always elected his 
nominee. Large places had sometimes a like character. In 
1828, at Newark, the Duke of Newcastle drove out 587 tenants 
who had ventured to vote against his candidate. (“ Have I not 
a right,” said he, “to do what I like with my own?”) So the 
Duke of Norfolk filled eleven seats; and fully two thirds of 
the whole House of Commons were really the appointees of 
great landlords. 

Many other places were “rotten boroughs.” That is, the 
few voters sold the seats in Parliament as a regular part of their 


Unrepre¬ 
sented cities 


And repre¬ 
sented ruins 


“ Pocket 
boroughs’ ’ 


“ Rotten 
boroughs ” 







508 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


Reform 
checked by 
foreign war, 
1689-1815 


George III 
opposes re¬ 
form 



private revenue. In 1766 Sudbury advertised in the public 
press that its parliamentary seat was for sale to the highest bid¬ 
der. Moreover, all voting was viva-voce, and the polls were 
held open for two weeks — so that there was every chance to 
sell and buy votes. 

The House of Commons had become hardly more represent¬ 
ative than the House of Lords. As the English historian Ma¬ 
caulay said, the “boasted representative system” of England 
had decayed into “a monstrous system of represented ruins 


Canvassing for Votes in “ Guzzledown.” — This is Number 2 in 
Hogarth’s “Humors of a Country Election.’’ Cf. Plate LXXXVIII. 

and unrepresented cities .” The reason why no reform had been 
secured was that from 1689 to 1815 all energies went to the long 
French wars. In the twelve years (1763-1775), between the 
“Seven Years’ War” and the American Revolution, the Whig 
leaders, like William Pitt, did attempt wise changes. But 
George III was determined to prevent reform. He felt that his 
two indolent and gross predecessors had allowed kingly power 
to slip from their hands (p. 384). He meant to get it back, 
and to “be a king” in fact as well as in name, as his mother had 



EARLY REFORM AGITATION 509 

urged him. To do this, he must be able to control Parliament. 
It would be easier to control it as it was then, than to control 
a Parliament that really represented the nation. 

And therefore, when just at this time the Americans began to 
cry, “ No taxation without representation,” King George felt 
it needful to put them down. If their claim were allowed, so 
must be the demand of Manchester and other new towns in 
England for representation in Parliament. But if the American 
demand could be made to seem a treasonable one, on the part 
of a distant group of rebels, then the king could check the move¬ 
ment in England. 

The American victory seemed at first to have won victory for 
English freedom also. Even before peace was declared, the 
younger Pitt asserted vehemently: Parliament “ is not repre¬ 
sentative of the people of Great Britain; it is representative of 
nominal boroughs, and exterminated towns, of noble families, 
of wealthy individuals.” This condition, he declared, alone 
had made it pos ble for the government to wage against America 
“this unjust, cruel, wicked, and diabolical war.” In the years 
that immediately followed the war, Pitt introduced three differ¬ 
ent bills for reform. But, before anything was accomplished, 
came the French Revolution ; and soon the violence of the Rev¬ 
olutionists in France turned the whole English middle class defi¬ 
nitely against change — and projects for reform slumbered for 
forty years more (1790-1830). This unhappy check came just 
when the evils of the Industrial Revolution were becoming 
serious. But the Tory party, which carried England stubbornly 
to victory through the tremendous wars against Napoleon , was 
totally unfitted to cope with internal questions, and looked on every 
time-sanctioned abuse as sacred. 

The peace of 1815 was followed by a general business depres¬ 
sion, — the first modern “ panic. ” Large parts of the working 
classes had no work and no food. This resulted in labor riots 
and in political agitation. The Tory government met such 
movements by stern laws, forbidding public meetings (without 
consent of magistrates) under penalty of death; suspending 


Relation to 
the Ameri¬ 
can Revolu 
tion 


Reform 
checked by 
hatred for 
the French 
Revolution 


Tory reac¬ 
tion after 
the Napo¬ 
leonic wars 






510 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


Some early 

reform 

movements 


Struggle for 
parliamen¬ 
tary reform 
begins in 
1830 


Fall of 
Wellington 


The Whig 
leaders 


habeas corpus (for the last time in England until the World 
War); and suppressing debating societies. 

The year 1821 marks the beginning of slow gains for reform. 
In 1825 Parliament recognized the right of workingmen to unite 
in labor unions — which had always before been treated as 
conspiracies. In 1828 political rights were restored to Protes¬ 
tant dissenters (Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists); and the 
next year the same justice was secured for Catholics. The 
atrocious laws regarding capital punishment, too, were modified 
by striking the death penalty from 100 offenses. 1 

Then, in 1830, George IV was succeeded by his brother Wil¬ 
liam IV, a more liberal-minded king; and the French Revo¬ 
lution of the same year, by its moderation and by its success, 
strengthened the reform party in England. A new Parliament 
was at once chosen; and the Whigs promptly introduced a 
motion to reform the representation. The prime minister was 
the Tory Wellington, the hero of Waterloo. He scorned the 
proposal, declaring that he did not believe the existing represen¬ 
tation “could be improved”! This speech cost him his popu¬ 
larity, both in and out of Parliament; and the Whigs came 
into power with Earl Grey as prime minister, and with Lord 
John Russell as leader in the Commons. 2 

Lord Russell drew a moderate bill for the reform of Parlia¬ 
ment. Representation was to be distributed somewhat more fairly 
by taking about 100 members away from rotten or pocket 
boroughs and assigning them to new places that needed repre¬ 
sentation ; and the suffrage was extended to all householders in 
the towns who owned or rented houses worth £50 a year, and to 
all “farmers” (p. 535). (Farm laborers were left out; as were 


1 The English penal code of the eighteenth century has been fitly called 
a “sanguinary chaos.” Whenever in the course of centuries a crime had 
become especially troublesome, some Parliament had fixed a death penalty 
for it, and no later Parliament had ever revised the code. In 1660 the 
number of “capital crimes” was fifty (three and a half times as many as 
there were in New England at the same time under the much slandered 
“blue laws”), and by 1800 the number had risen to over two hundred. To 
steal a sheep, to snatch a handkerchief out of a woman’s hand, to cut down 
trees in an orchard, were all punishable by death. 

2 Russell was the son of a duke, and his title of Lord at this time was only 
a “courtesy title.” 


THE FIRST REFORM BILL 


511 


the town artisan class, living as its members did in tenements 
or as lodgers.) 

To the Tories this mild measure seemed to threaten the foun¬ 
dations of society. Fierce debates lasted month after month. 
In March of 1831 the ministry carried the “second reading” 
by a majority of one vote. It was plain that the Whig majority 
was not large enough to save the bill from hostile amendment. 
(A bill has to pass three “ readings,” and amendments are usually 
considered after the second.) The ministry decided to dissolve, 
and “appeal to the country” for better support. The king 
was bitterly opposed to this plan. A passionate scene took 
place between him and his ministers, but he was forced to give 
way — and so, incidentally, it was settled that the ministry, 
not the king, dissolves Parliament. (This means that Parlia¬ 
ment really dissolves itself.) 

The Whigs went into the new campaign with the cry, “The 
Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.” Despite the un¬ 
representative nature of Parliament, they won an overwhelm¬ 
ing majority. In June Lord Russell introduced the bill again. 
In September it passed the Commons, 345 to 239. Then the 
Lords calmly voted it down. One session of the second Parlia¬ 
ment was wasted. The nation cried out passionately against 
the House of Lords. There was much violence, and England 
seemed on the verge of revolution. 

In December the same Parliament met for a new session. 
Lord Russell introduced the same bill for the third time. It 
passed the Commons by an increased majority. This time the 
Lords did not venture altogether to throw it out, but they tacked 
on hostile amendments. The king had always had power to 
make new peers at will. Lord Grey now demanded from the 
king authority to create enough new peers to save the bill. Wil¬ 
liam refused. Grey resigned. For eleven days England had 
no government. The Tories tried to form a ministry, but could 
get no majority. Angry mobs stormed about the king’s carriage 
in the streets, and the Whig leaders went so far as secretly to 
prepare for civil war. 

Finally the king recalled the Whig ministry. He was still 


The king 
forced to 
yield to his 
Ministers 


Lords and 
Commons 


The 

“ Eleven 
Days ” 





512 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


The Lords 
become an 
inferior 
house 


The 
“ king’s 
ministers ” 
become the 
nation’s ex¬ 
ecutive 

Excursus 
on minis¬ 
terial gov¬ 
ernment 


unwilling to create new peers, but he offered to use his personal 
influence to get the upper House to pass the bill. Happily, Earl 
Grey was firm to show where real sovereignty lay; and the king 
was compelled to sign the paper (still exhibited in the British 
Museum) on which the earl had written, “The King grants 
permission to Earl Grey ... to create such a number of new 
peers as will insure the passage of the Reform Bill.” This ended 
the struggle. It was not needful actually to make new peers. 
The Tory lords withdrew from the sessions, and the bill passed, 
June 4, 1832. 

Incidentally the long contest had settled two points in the 
constitution: 

It had shown how the Commons could control the Lords. 

It had shown that the ministers are not the king’s ministry, except 
in name, but that they are really the ministry, or servants, of the 
House of Commons. This principle has never since been threat¬ 
ened. The king acts only through the ministers. Even the 
speech he reads at the opening of Parliament is written for him. 

The way in which a change in ministry is brought about should 
be clearly understood. If the ministry is outvoted on any 
matter of importance, it must resign. If it does not do so, and 
claims to be in doubt whether it has really lost its majority, 
its opponents will test the matter by moving a vote of “lack 
of confidence.” If this carries, the ministry takes it as a man¬ 
date to resign. There is only one alternative : If the ministry 
believes that the nation will support it, it may dissolve Parlia¬ 
ment, and “appeal to the country.” If the new Parliament 
gives it a majority, it may go on. If not, it must at once give 
way to a new ministry. 

In form, the new ministry is chosen by the king; but in reality, 
he simply names those whom the will of the majority in the Com¬ 
mons has plainly pointed out. Indeed, he names only one man, 
whom he asks to “form a government.” This man becomes 
prime minister, and selects the other ministers. In a parlia¬ 
mentary election, Englishmen really vote also for the next prime 
minister, just as truly, though not as directly, as Americans 


MINISTERIAL GOVERNMENT 


513 


vote for their President. If the king asked any one else to form 
a ministry but the man whom the Commons have accepted 
as their leader, probably the man asked would respectfully de¬ 
cline. If he tried to act, he would fail to get other strong men 
to join him, and his ministry would at once fall. If there is any 
real uncertainty as to which one of several men is leader, the 
matter is settled by conference among the leaders, and the new 
ministry, of course, includes all of them. 

A curious feature to foreign observers is that all this com¬ 
plex procedure rests only on custom — nowhere on a written 
constitution. Each member of the Cabinet is the head of some 
great department — Foreign Affairs, Exchequer, War, and so on. 
The leading assistants in all these departments —* some forty 
people now — are included in the ministry. About twenty 
of the forty, — holding the chief positions, — make the inner 
circle which is called the Cabinet. The Cabinet is really “ the 
Government/’ and is often referred to by that title. It is the 
real executive; and it is also the “ steering committee ” of the legis¬ 
lature. In their private meetings the members of the Cabinet 
decide upon general policy. In Parliament they introduce bills 
and advocate them. As ministers, they carry out the plans 
agreed upon. In these changes, the king’s veto has disappeared. 
The last veto was by Queen Anne in 1707. 

Thus we have two types of democratic government in the 
world, both developed by English-speaking peoples. They 
differ from each other mainly in regard to the executive. In the 
United States, the executive is a president, or governor, inde¬ 
pendent of the legislature. The other republics upon this con¬ 
tinent have adopted this American type. In England, the 
executive has become practically a steering committee of the 
legislature. This type is the one adopted by most of the free 
governments of the world outside America. 

For Further Reading. — The most brilliant story is Justin 
McCarthy’s Epoch of Reform, 25-83. Rose’s Rise of Democracy, 9-52, 
is excellent. 






CHAPTER LTV 


The “ Vic¬ 
torian age ' 


English 

politics 


Table of 
administra¬ 
tions 


REFORM IN THE VICTORIAN AGE 

In 1837 William IV was succeeded by his niece, Victoria, whose 
reign filled the next sixty-four years. Victoria came to the 
throne a modest, high-minded girl of eighteen years. She was 
not brilliant, but she grew into a worthy, sensible woman, of ex¬ 
cellent moral influence. (In 1840 she married Albert, the ruler 
of a small German principality; and their happy and lovely 
family life was an example new to European courts for gener¬ 
ations.) The remaining two thirds of the century was, for all 
the world, an era of prosperity, intellectual glory and moral 
refinement, democratic progress and social reform, and vast 
expansion of civilization. In all this advance, Britain held 
a first place. 

The Reform Bill of 1832 had given the vote to one out of six 
grown men (five times as liberal as the French franchise after 
the Revolution of 1830). Political power had passed from a 
narrow landed oligarchy to a broad middle-class aristocracy. 
Political parties soon took new names. “Conservative” began 
to replace “Tory,” and “Liberal” replaced “Whig.” From 
1832 to 1874, except for short intervals, the Liberals were in 
power, carrying a long list of social reforms. Finally the Con¬ 
servatives, too, adopted a liberal policy toward social reform, 
and secured longer leases of power. The following table of ad¬ 
ministrations will be convenient for reference: 


1830-34 , 

1834-35 

Liberals 
. Grey 

Conserv¬ 

atives 

. Peel 

1846-52 . 
1852 . . 

Liberals 

Russell 

Conserv¬ 

atives 

Derby 

1835-41 . 

1841-46 

. Melbourne 


1852-58 < 

1858-59 . 

( (1) Aberdeen 
[ (2) Palmerston 

Derby 


514 







A CENTURY OF REFORM 


515 


1859-66 

1866-68 

1868-74 

1874-80 

1880-85 

1885- 86 
1886 . 

1886- 92 

1892-95 


Conserv- 

Liberals atives 

{ (1) Palmerston 
(2) Russell 

. Derby 

. Gladstone 

.Disraeli 

. Gladstone 

. Salisbury 

. Gladstone 

. Salisbury 

f (1) Gladstone 
\ (2) Rosebery 


1895-1906 
1906 . . 


Conserv- 

Liberals atives 

j (1) Salisbury 
* 1 (2) Balfour 
Campbell-Bannerman 
Asquith (to 1915) 


[1915—1918 A coalition war-ministry, 
led by Lloyd George] 
1919-1922 A coalition ministry, 
mainly Conservatives, 
led by Lloyd George 
1922 ...... Bonar Law 


The man who did most to educate the Conservatives into Disraeli and 
this new attitude was the Jew, Disraeli. He was an author, Gladstone 
a brilliant genius, and a shrewd politician. Some critics called 
him “ a Conservative with Radical opinions,” while others in¬ 
sisted that he had no principles in politics. 

An even more important political figure was Disraeli’s great 
adversary, William E. Gladstone. Gladstone entered Parlia¬ 
ment in 1833, at the first election after the Reform Bill, and 
soon proved himself a powerful orator and a master of debate. 

He was then an extreme Tory. By degrees he grew Liberal, 
and thirty years later he succeeded Lord Russell as the unchal¬ 
lenged leader of that party. For thirty years more he held 
that place — four times prime minister. His early friends ac¬ 
cused him bitterly as treacherous; but the world at large 
accepted his own simple explanation of his changes, — “I was 
brought up to distrust liberty; I learned to believe in it. ” 

I. POLITICAL REFORM 

Working- 
class dis¬ 
content 
after 1832 


The Tories at once accepted the result of 1832, as the Conservative 
party in England always does when a new reform has once been 
forced upon them. But they planted themselves upon it as a final¬ 
ity. Even the Whigs agreed for many years in this “finality” 
view so far as political reform was concerned. A few eager 
Radicals in Parliament for a time kept up a cry for a -more lib¬ 
eral franchise, but soon even they gave up the contest, to take 
part in the great social legislation of the period. 











516 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


The trade- 
union move 
ment 


The 

Chartist 

agitation 


True, the masses of workingmen knew that the victory of 1832 
had been won largely by their sympathy and public demon¬ 
strations, and they felt that they had been cheated of the fruits. 1 
This class continued restless; but they lacked leadership, and, 
in ordinary times, their claims secured little attention. At 
first, they turned to trade unions, and sought to get better wages 
and shorter hours by strikes. But employers united, dismissed 
all union workmen, and, aided by the conservative courts, 
stamped out the movement for many years. A strike by a 
union the courts held a ‘‘conspiracy,” and in 1837 they trans¬ 
ported six labor leaders to the Australian penal settlements. 

Then the Radicals turned again to politics. There were two 
marked periods of agitation at intervals of nearly twenty years, 
— just before 1848 and again before 1867. The earlier is the 
famous Chartist movement. Even before the First Reform Bill, 
there had been an extensive agitation for a more radical change, 
and the extremists had fixed upon six points to struggle for: 
(1) manhood suffrage, (2) equal electoral districts, (3) abolition 
of all property qualification for membership in Parliament, 
(4) payment of members, (5) the ballot, and (6) annual elections. 
In 1837 the Radicals renewed their agitation, and these “Six 
Points” were embodied in a proposed Charter. Five of them 
have since become law, and the sixth is no longer of any c@n- 
sequence; but to the ordinary Liberal of 1840 these demands 
seemed to prelude revolution and anarchy. 

“Forty-eight” was the critical year. The Chartists adopted 
a resolution, “ All labor shall cease until the people’s Charter 
becomes the law of the land.” But this first attempt at a 
“general strike” for political purposes, along with accom¬ 
panying plans for monster petitions and processions, fizzled 
out, with no disturbance that called for anything more than 
a few extra policemen. The “year of revolutions” left Eng¬ 
land unmoved, and the Chartist movement died. 

The next agitation took its rise from the suffering of the un¬ 
employed while the American Civil War cut off the supply of 
cotton for English factories, and it was strengthened by the 

1 There is an admirable treatment in Rose’s Rise of Democracy , ch. ii. 




THE SECOND REFORM BILL 


517 


victory of the democratic North in that war over the aristo¬ 
cratic South. This time no one dreamed of force. The Lib¬ 
erals, under Russell, introduced a reform measure, but lost power 
because they did not go far enough. Then, said Disraeli, cyni¬ 
cally, “If the country is bound to have reform, we might as 
well give it to them” — and stay in office. Thus the “Second 
Reform Bill ” (passed in 1867 by a Conservative ministry) ex¬ 
tended the franchise to the artisan class (all householders and 
all lodgers who paid ten pounds a year for their rooms). This 
raised the number of voters to over three millions, or to some¬ 
thing over half the adult male population. The unskilled la¬ 
borers in town and country, and the male house-servants, still 
had no votes; but England had taken a tremendous step to¬ 
ward democracy. 

This victory of 1867, like that of .1832, was followed by a 
period of sweeping legislation for social reform, — mainly in 
Gladstone’s Liberal ministry, 1868-1874 (p. 523). Then, after 
a Conservative ministry, led by Disraeli and chiefly concerned 
with foreign matters (p. 523), Gladstone took office again, and 
the “Third Reform Bill” (1884) in large measure enfranchised 
the unskilled laborer and the servant class. This raised the 
electorate to over six millions, and (except for unmarried sons 
without property, living in the father’s family, and for laborers 
living in very cheap houses) it gave votes to practically all self- 
supporting men, leaving out only about one seventh the adult 
males. The next year, Parliament did away with the chief 
remaining inequalities in representation by dividing England 
into parliamentary districts. 

Three other reforms in this period made British politics clean 
and honest. 

In 1870 the secret ballot was introduced . The form adopted 
was the excellent one known as the Australian ballot, from its 
use in Victoria. (The Dominion of Canada has since then 
adopted a .similar model.) 

Between 1855 and 1870, the civil service was thoroughly reformed. 

In earlier years, public offices had been given to reward political 


The Second 
Reform 
Bill, 1867 :. 
England a 
democracy 


The Third 
Reform 
Bill, 1884 


Other re¬ 
forms in 
politics 







518 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


partisans, in as disgraceful a degree as ever marked American 
politics. But since 1870, appointments have always been made 
after competitive examinations, and there has been no removal 
of appointed officials for party reasons. 

Bribery in elections, direct and also indirect, was effectively checked 
by the “Corrupt Practices Prevention Act ” of 1883, drawn along 
lines afterwards adopted in Canada. 


Local 

government 

reform 


Reform in 
town gov¬ 
ernment be¬ 
gins in 1835 


Parish, Dis¬ 
trict, and 
County 
Councils 


The extension of the franchise in the “Reform” bills applied 
only to parliamentary elections. But local government also 
called for reform. It had been highly aristocratic. It was 
not centralized, as in France; but each rural unit (county or 
parish) was in the hands of the local aristocracy, while the town 
government (usually vested in a self-elected mayor and council, 
holding office for life) had become exceedingly selfish and 
corrupt and had proved wholly indifferent to the pressing needs 
of the growing city populations. But in 1835 a Municipal Re¬ 
form Bill provided that 183 boroughs (indicated by name) should 
each have a municipal council elected by all who paid local taxes. 
The Lords went wild with dismay at this “ gigantic innovation,” 
and by votes of 6 to 1, they amended nearly every clause in the 
bill so as to make it worthless. The Commons refused the 
amendments; and after a four months’ struggle the Lords 
yielded. From time to time, new towns were added to the list; 
and finally, in 1882, it was provided that any town might adopt 
this form of government for itself. Since 1835, English town 
government has been honest, efficient, and enlightened, — a 
model to all other democratic countries. The best citizens 
serve in the town councils. The appointed officials, like the 
city engineer, city health officer, and so on, are men of high 
professional standing, who are almost never appointed or re¬ 
moved for political purposes. 

In the rural units the rule of the country gentry had been 
free from corruption, and it lasted until the latter part of the 
century. It had not been particularly enlightened, however, 
and in 1888 and 1894 the County Council Bill and the Parish 
Councils Bill made local government thoroughly democratic. (1) The 


LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM 


519 


parish has a popular assembly (parish meeting ). (2) Parishes 

with more than three hundred people have also an elective Parish 
Council. (3) Larger sub¬ 
divisions of the county, 
known as Districts, have 
elective District Councils. 

And (4) at the top is the 
elective County Council. 

The powers of all these 
local bodies are very 
great. 

For Further Reading. 

— On the Second and Third 
Reform Bills, interesting 
treatments are to be found 
in Hazen, Rose, McCarthy’s 
History of Our Own Times, 
and in the younger Mc¬ 
Carthy’s England under 
Gladstone. Beard’s English 
Historians, 566-581 and 582- 
593, is admirable. On the 
Chartists, Rose, 84-146 ; 

Hazen, 446-450. 

II. SOCIAL REFORM 

The thirties were a period of humanitarian agitation, as well 
as of democratic advance. Charles Dickens wrote his moving 
stories of the abuses in the courts, the schools, the factories, 
the shops. Carlyle thundered against injustice, in Chartism 
and in Past and Present; Mrs. Browning pleaded for the 
abused children in touching poems; and Parliament responded 
to the same impulse. 

After carrying the Reform Bill of 1832, Earl Grey’s ministry 
(1) freed the Negro slaves in the West India colonies, paying the 
colonists for their loss 1 ; (2) began to free the hardly less misera¬ 
ble “white slaves” of the English factory towns, by a new 
era of factory legislation (p. 520); (3) freed the Irish peasants 

1 Special Report : Wilberforce, and his work for emancipation. 



Queen Victoria, late in life. 


Social re¬ 
forms just 
after the 
First Re¬ 
form Bill 








520 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


The Factory 
Act of 1833 


The Factory 
Act of 1847 


Later fac¬ 
tory acts 


from the obligation of paying tithes to support the Episcopa¬ 
lian clergy, whom they hated; (4) abolished the pillory and 
the whipping post, and began to reform the foul and inhuman 
conditions in the prisons; (5) began the reform of local gov¬ 
ernment (p. 518); and (6) made a first step toward public edu¬ 
cation, by a national grant of £20,000 a year to church schools. 

The most important legislation of the century was the labor 
and factory legislation here begun. Gradually Englishmen 
had awakened to the ugly fact that the new factory system 
was ruining, not only the souls, but also the bodies of hundreds 
of thousands of women and children, so as to threaten national 
degeneracy. In 1833, among the first acts of the “ Reformed 
Parliament,” Lord Ashley (Earl of Shaftesbury) 1 secured a 
factory law limiting the work of children (under thirteen years) 
to forty-eight hours a week, and that of “young people” (from 
thirteen to eighteen years) to sixty-nine hours a week (or twelve 
hours on five days and nine hours on Saturdays), and strictly 
forbidding the employment of children under nine (!) 

In 1847 a still greater factory law limited the labor of women 
and “young persons” (between 14 and 16) to ten hours a day 
with only half-time for “children” (between 9 and 14) and with 
provision for schooling in the vacant half of the day. (Indirectly 
this law fixed a limit upon the hours of men also, because, after 
the women and children had all left a factory, it was not profit¬ 
able to keep the machinery going. Thus ten hours became the 
factory working-day many years before this goal was reached 
generally in other countries. 

Of the long series of later acts, the most important is the great 
Act of 1901, which revised and advanced the factory legislation 
of the preceding century. Since 1901, no child under 12 can 
be employed at all in any sort of factory or workshop; and for 
employees between 12 and 16, a physician must certify that 
there is no danger of physical injury from the employment. 2 

1 Special report upon his work for reform. 

2 For Further Reading. — Gibbin’s Industrial History of England, 175- 
176, and Cheyney’s Industrial and Social History, 224-262. Vivid statements 
are given also in Justin McCarthy’s Epoch of Reform, History of Our 
Own Times, and England in the Nineteenth Century. 


PLATE LXXXIX 



Westminsteb Abbey (really a cathedral, not an abbey), England’s “Temple of Fame.” The south 
transept (seen toward the extreme right) contains the “Poets’ Corner,” —true holy ground for 
all English-speaking peoples. 























PLATE XC 



Sir Robert Peel speaking for the Repeal of the Corn Laws before the 
amazed House of Commons. A painting by T. Walter Wilson. 








FREE TRADE 


521 


These acts have been accompanied by many provisions to 
secure good lighting and ventilation in factories and workshops, 
and to prevent accidents from machinery, by compelling the 
employer to fence it in with every possible care. In 1880 an 
Employers' Liability Act made it easy for a workman to secure 
compensation for any injury for which he was not himself to 
blame; and in 1897 a still more generous Workman’s Compen¬ 
sation Act secured such compensation for the workmen by a 
simple process without lawsuits. (These acts have been copied 
in the last few years by other progressive nations.) 

The short Conservative ministry of Peel (1841-1846) was 
marked by the abolition of the Corn Laws. Those laws had 
put an excessively high tariff on imported grain. Their aim was 
to encourage the raising of foodstuffs in England, so as to make 
sure of a home supply; and during the Napoleonic war this 
policy perhaps had been justifiable. The money profits, how¬ 
ever, had always gone mainly to the landlords, who enacted 
the laws in Parliament and who raised rents high enough to 
confiscate the benefits which the high prices might otherwise 
have brought to the farmer. After the rapid growth in popu¬ 
lation had made it impossible for England to produce enough 
food for her people anyway, the landlords’ monopoly of bread- 
stuffs had become an intolerable burden upon the starving mul¬ 
titudes. 

The needless misery among this class finally aroused great 
moral indignation. In 1838 the Anti-Corn-Law League, organ¬ 
ized by Richard Cobden and John Bright , carried on a campaign 
of education through the press and by means of great public 
meetings. The manufacturing capitalists were made to see 
that the Corn Laws taxed them, indirectly, for the benefit of 
the landlords — since to enable their workmen to live, they had 
to pay higher wages than would otherwise have been necessary. 
And so the selfish interests of this influential manufacturing 
class were thrown to the side of this particular reform. 

1 Finally, in 1846, a huge calamity was added to the same side. 
This was the Irish Famine. The population of Ireland had been 
increasing rapidly, until it amounted to over eight millions. 


Workman’s 
Compensa¬ 
tion Act 


The old 
“ Corn 
Laws ” 





522 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


The Irish 
Famine 
forces free 
trade in 
food 


Free trade 
adopted as 
a policy 


The greater part were poor peasants, living in misery, with 
the potato for almost their sole food. Suddenly, in 1846, in 
a night, came a blight that ruined the crop for the year; and, 
despite generous gifts of food from all the world, two million 
people died of starvation. 1 

The government in England had already been considering a 
reform of the Corn Laws, and this terrible event in Ireland forced 
it to act. Peel decided to let food in free; and, despite bitter 
opposition from the landlords of his own party, the reform was 
adopted. 

One interesting result of the bitter feeling of the Tory land¬ 
lords was the passing of the factory act of 1847 (p. 520). That 
much-needed reform had been vehemently opposed by manu¬ 
facturing Liberals, like John Bright, who urged (1) that it would 
oblige manufacturers to reduce wages and raise prices ; (2) that 
it took from the workman his “freedom of contract” (!); and 
(3) that it would ruin English industry and drive capital away to 
countries where there was no such “mischievous legislation.” 
But the landlord Tories, who had just been beaten by Bright 
on the Corn Laws, grimly took their revenge by forcing this other 
reform upon the manufacturing capitalists. The story shows 
that neither division of the capitalist class could see any needs of 
the working class that conflicted with their own unjust profits. 

Peel was soon overthrown by a party revolt, but the Liberals 
took up his work and carried it farther. They abolished one 
protective tariff after another, until, by 1852 , England had become 
a u free trade ” country. For the next half century this policy 
was never seriously questioned in England. Soon after 1900, 
however, some Conservative leaders began to advocate a policy 
of “fair trade,” or a system of retaliatory tariffs against coun¬ 
tries whose tariffs shut out British manufactures; and in 1909 
and 1910 the Conservative party made its campaigns on this 
issue; but so far (1923) it has not won. 

After the enfranchisement of the artisan class by the Re¬ 
form Bill of 1867, came Gladstone’s great reform administration 

1 A million more Irish emigrated to America during the next four years 
(1847-1850). 


GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI 


523 


(1868-1874), which rivals in importance that of Earl Grey in 
the thirties. It established alongside the old private and paro¬ 
chial schools a new system of public schools, or, as the Eng¬ 
lish call them, Board Schools. 1 It abolished purchase of office 
in the army, and completed the civil service reform (p. 517). 
It introduced the ballot (p. 517). It opened English univer¬ 
sities to others than the members of the Church of England. 
It passed further factory laws. It definitely repealed the old 
conspiracy laws, under which labor unions had been persecuted, 
and it gave legal rights to such unions, permitting them to in¬ 
corporate and secure the rights at law of an individual. It 
also arranged honorably the Alabama Arbitration Treaty with 
the United States. It “disendowed” and “disestablished” 
the English Church in Ireland, and carried through important 
land reforms for Ireland (pp. 526-527). 

But, despite the trade-union law, Gladstone offended 
the labor party by a new law regarding strikes. This law 
recognized the right of a union to strike, but made criminal 
any show of intimidation. It forbade strikers to revile those 
who remained at work; and it is reported that under the law 
seven wpmen were sent to prison for crying “ Bah !” at a work¬ 
man who had deserted the strikers. The ministry lost more 
and more of its support, and finally Gladstone “dissolved.” 
In the election, the labor unions voted for the Conservatives; 
and that party secured a large majority, for the first time since 
1832. 

Then followed Disraeli’s administration of 187 Jf-1880 with its 
“ dazzling foreign policy” The only reform at home was the 
promised repeal of the law against strikes. Gladstone’s ministry 
had been exceedingly peaceful and magnanimous in dealing with 
foreign nations. Disraeli, leader of the new ministry, character¬ 
ized this attitude as weak, and said that it had “ compromised 

1 So called because they are managed by elected Boards. (The term 
“public school’’ in England had been appropriated by the great secondary 
schools, like Rugby, though there is no public control over them.) The 
Board Schools have revolutionized the English working-class. In 1850, 
more than a third of the newly married couples had to sign their names in 
the marriage registers with their “marks” ; but in 1903 only two per cent 
were unable to write their names. 


Gladstone's 
reform ad¬ 
ministration, 
1868-1874 


The labor 
unions 
desert 
Gladstone 


Disraeli’s 
imperialistic 
administra¬ 
tion, 1874 - 
1880 






524 


ENGLAND, 1815-1914 


Gladstone’s 

second 

ministry, 

1880-1885 


the honor” of England. He adopted an aggressive foreign 
policy, and tried to excite English patriotism by “jingo” 1 ut¬ 
terances and conduct. By act of Parliament, Queen Victoria 
was declared “ Empress of India ”; the Boers of the Transvaal 
were “protected,” mainly that England might annex their lands ; 
and in 1878, when Russia conquered Turkey (p. 623) and seemed 

about to exclude the Turks 
from Europe, Disraeli in¬ 
terfered. He got together 
a Congress of the Powers 
at Berlin, and saved enough 
of European Turkey to shut 
Russia off from the Medi¬ 
terranean. 

Gladstone came forth. 
from retirement to carry on 
a great campaign against 
this policy of supporting 
the Turk in his mastery 
over the Christian popu¬ 
lations of southeastern 
Europe. His appeal to the 
moral sense of the English 
people was successful; and 

Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, late in in the election of 1880 the 
his career. T -i i i 

Liberals secured an over¬ 
whelming majority. The evil work of the Congress of Berlin 
could not now be undone; but Gladstone’s new ministry passed 
the Third Reform Bill and it also completed the purification 
of English politics by adopting the law against “Corrupt 
Practices” (p. 518). Soon, however, this Liberal ministry 
found itself occupied with Irish questions, about which British 
politics were to revolve for the next fifteen years. 



1 This word comes from a popular music hall song of 1878: 

“We don’t want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do 
We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships. 

We’ve got the money, too.” 





IRELAND TO 1800 


525 


III. ENGLAND AND THE IRISH QUESTION 

The tragic story of Ireland to the close of Elizabeth’s day has 
been told. JSaid an English poet-historian of that time, “If 
it had been practised in Hell as it has been in Ireland, it had 
long since destroyed the very kingdom of Beelzebub.” Just 
before the Civil War in England, the goaded Irish rose in fierce 
rebellion. A little later the merciless hand of Cromwell restored 
order with a cruelty which makes his name a by-word in Ireland 
to-day. Toward the close of the century, the Irish sided with 
James II against William III, but were defeated at the Battle 
of the Boyne (1690). The Treaty of Limerick (1691), however, 
promised them the enjoyment of their own religion and certain 
other privileges; but these promises were treacherously broken by 
the British settlers, who controlled the parliament of the island, 
so that Limerick is known as “ the City of the Broken Treaty.” 

During the eighteenth century the fate of Ireland was 
wretched beyond description. In parts of Lister (the northern 
province) the population was mainly British. Elsewhere 
six sevenths of the land belonged to English landlords, most of 
whom lived in England and spent their rents there. Six 
sevenths of the people were Catholic Irish. A few of these, 
especially in the west, were country gentlemen; a considerable 
number more were tenant farmers; but the great bulk were a 
starving peasantry, working the land for Saxon landlords and 
living in mud hovels, — each with an acre or two of ground 
about it. 

Farmers and laborers alike were “tenants at will.” That is, 
they could be evicted at the landlord’s word. Population was 
so crowded that there was always sharp competition to get farms 
and cottages, and so the landlord could make his own terms. 
If the tenant improved the buildings or drained the land, he 
commonly found at once that he had to pay more rent, so that 
he himself got no profit from his extra labor. This system of 
“rack rent” made the peasantry reckless and lazy; and the 
fact that the law of their masters was used only to oppress them 
trained them to hate and break the law. 


Cromwell 

and 

William III 


Ireland in 
the 

eighteenth 

century 


“ Rack 
rent ” 





The Rebel¬ 
lion and the 
“ Union ” 


Young Ire¬ 
land 


And the 
Fenians 


Gladstone’s 

reforms 


526 ENGLAND AND THE IRISH 

In 1798 the Irish rebelled. They were promised aid by the 
French Directory; but the help did not come in time, and the 
rising was put down with horrible cruelty. A change in the 
government followed. For several centuries, there had been 
a.separate parliament for Ireland (controlled by the English 
settlers); but after 1798 England consolidated the government 
of the two islands. The Act of Union (1800) abolished the Irish 
legislature (giving Ireland one hundred representatives in the 
English Parliament), and made Ireland subject directly to Eng¬ 
lish rule and English officials. 

These were the conditions at the opening of the nineteenth 
century. In 1803 a brilliant young Irishman, Robert Emmet , 
tried to organize a rebellion for Irish independence; but the 
effort failed miserably, and Emmet died on the scaffold. 

The struggle for the repeal of the Union began in 1830, in the 
first English Parliament in which Catholics were allowed to sit 
(p. 510). Forty of the Irish delegation were pledged to work 
for repeal, and they were led by the dauntless Daniel O'Connell; 
but the Irish famine of 1846 checked the agitation, and just 
afterward O’Connell died. Then a band of hot-headed young 
men tried conspiracy, and the fruitless and rather farcical re¬ 
bellion of Young Ireland marked the year 1848. 

The next twenty years saw no progress. In 1866 came an¬ 
other rebellion, — the Fenian Conspiracy, -— organized by Irish 
officers who had served in the American Civil War. The danger 
did not become serious, but it convinced many liberal English¬ 
men that something must be done for Ireland, and Gladstone’s 
reform ministry of 1868-1874 took up the task. 

1. Since the day of Elizabeth, the Episcopal church had 
held the ancient property of the Catholic church in Ireland, 
though in 1835 a parliamentary commission failed to find one 
Protestant (except the appointed clergy) in any one of 150 par¬ 
ishes. That foreign church was now disestablished (deprived 
of political privileges) and partially disendowed — though it 
kept its buildings and enough other property to leave it still 
very rich. 

2. This act of partial justice was followed in 1870 by the first 



THE HOME-RULE STRUGGLE 


527 


of a long series of important reforms of the land laws. Two things 
were attempted: (1) in case of removal, it was ordered that 
the landlord must pay for any improvements the tenant had 
made; and (2) the government arranged to lend money on 
long time and at low interest, to the tenants, so that they might 
buy their little patches of land. In 1881 and 1885 Gladstone’s 
ministries extended and improved these laws until the peasants 
began to be true land-owners, with a chance to develop new 
habits of thrift and industry. 


Meantime, in 1870, a group of Irish members of Parliament 
had begun a new agitation for “ Home Rule,” and soon afterward 
the same leaders organized the “Land League,” to try to fix 
rents, as labor unions sometimes try to fix wages. For the 
time, the Liberal ministry frowned on both these movements, 
and prosecuted the Land League sternly on the ground that 
it encouraged crime against landlords. 

But suddenly Gladstone made a change of front. In the new 
Parliament of 1884, eighty-six of Ireland’s hundred and five 
members were “Home Rulers.” They began to block all legis¬ 
lation ; and Gladstone could go on only by securing their alli¬ 
ance. Moreover, he had become convinced that the only way to 
govern Ireland was to govern it in cooperation with the Irish, and 
not in opposition to them. So in 1886 he adopted the “ Home- 
Rule” plan and introduced a bill to restore a separate legis¬ 
lature to Ireland. 

The Conservatives declared that this policy meant disunion 
and ruin to the Empire, and in this belief they were joined by 
many of the old Liberals, who took the name of Liberal Union¬ 
ists. The Home-Rule Bill was defeated; but it made the issue 
in the next election a few years later, and in 1893 Gladstone 
tried to carry another such measure. This time, the Commons 
passed the bill, but the Lords threw it out. The majority for 
it in the Commons was narrow, and plainly due only to the 
Irish vote. Thus Gladstone felt that the nation would not 
support him in any attempt to pass the bill by swamping the 
Lords with new peers. At this moment his age compelled him 


Reform and 
coercion 


Gladstone 
converted to 
Home 
Rule 


Gladstone’s 

retirement 






528 


ENGLAND AND THE IRISH 


Further land 
reform 


The Sinn 
Fein move¬ 
ment 


to retire from parliamentary life, and the Liberals, left for a 
time without a fit leader, went out of power. 

The Conservatives and Unionists then tried to conciliate 
Ireland by extending the policy of government loans to the peas¬ 
antry to an almost unlim¬ 
ited extent, though for¬ 
merly they had railed at 
such acts as robbery and 
socialism; and they grant¬ 
ed a kind of heal “home 
rule,” by establishing elec¬ 
tive County Councils like 
those in England. The 
Irish members kept up 
agitation in Parliament, 
but for a long time even 
the Liberals seemed to 
have lost interest in Irish 
Home Rule; and indeed 
it was plain that nothing 
could be done until after 
the “mending or ending” 
of the House of Lords. 
This matter was soon 
forced to the front in connection with English questions 
(pp. 529 ff.). 

Meantime a group of ardent Irish scholars and poets had be¬ 
gun to revive the use of Erse (the ancient Irish language) and 
to build the old Irish history and legends into a noble and beauti¬ 
ful literature. A new sense of nationality, due largely to this 
literary revival, soon gave birth to the Sinn Fein movement 
(“Ourselves alone”), calling for complete independence. 










v>- 


CHAPTER LV , 

RECENT REFORM IN ENGLAND: “WAR UPON POVERTY” 

I hope that great advance will be made during this generation toward 
the time when poverty, with its wretchedness and squalor, will be as remote 
from the people of this country as are the wolves which once infested its 
forests. — Lloyd George, in 1909 . 

After Gladstone’s retirement, the Conservatives held power for 
ten years ( 1896-1905 ). They carried forward some social re¬ 
forms which they had once bitterly opposed — such as factory 
reform and Irish-land reform — but they also placed the Eng¬ 
lish Board schools under the control of the established church. 
In 1905 the Liberals returned to power with a group of new 
leaders, who still (1921) remain prominent in English public life, 
— Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Winston Churchill. 
The ministry which contained these men was supported by the 
largest parliamentary majority which had been seen since the 
First Reform Bill. The same election sent fifty Labor repre¬ 
sentatives to Parliament, several of them avowed Socialists. 

The new ministry sought at once to take the schools back 
from the control of the church but succeeded only in part — 
owing to the veto of the Lords. That House, too, ventured 
to challenge conflict by vetoing a bill that tried to take 
away the “plural votes” of rich men. 1 To “end or mend” 
the obstructive House of Lords had been part of the Liberal 
platform for a quarter of a century. Now the issue was com¬ 
ing to the front. The final clash came over the budget. 

1 The English law permitted a man to vote in as many counties as he 
held landed property. The defense of this ancient privilege of property 
had become a matter of intense feeling with the English Conservatives. 
The Liberals shouted the slogan, “One man, one vote.’’ (Since elections 
were not yet held all on one day, the actual number of plural votes was 
rather large; and, besides, they were considered a hateful class distinction.) 

529 


The Con¬ 
servative 
rule, 1896- 

1905 


Return of 
the Liberals 
to power 


Fifty Labor 
members in 

1905 
















530 


RECENT REFORM IN ENGLAND 


Lloyd 
George’s 
budget of 
1909 


The Lords 

challenge 

conflict 


Each year the ministry presents a statement of the expenses 
it intends to incur, and of the taxes it proposes to lay where¬ 
with to meet those expenses. This statement is the budget. In 
April of 1909 Lloyd George, finance minister, presented a budget 
which honestly horrified Conservatives, and which was the 
most socialistic step ever taken up to that time by a great 
government. (1) A graduated income tax took a large part 
of all incomes over £5000, and bore more heavily on unearned 
incomes than on those earned. (2) A. graduated inheritance tax 
took larger proportions than formerly of inheritances. (3) A 
much higher tax was placed on land that paid rents and royalties 
to landlords than on land worked by its owners. (4) Most 
important of all, there was a provision that when any man sold 
land for more than it had cost, he must pay one fifth the gain 
into the national treasury. (This is known as a tax on the “ un¬ 
earned increment,” and is a move toward the doctrine of the 
Single-taxers, who wish the community to take all such unearned 
increment.) 

The Conservatives attacked this budget violently as revolu¬ 
tionary. Especially they denounced the distinction regarding 
unearned incomes as an “ invidious assault on the rights of prop¬ 
erty. ” Moreover, they claimed that the treasury did not need 
such vast income as was proposed. As to this last point, Lloyd 
George declared that he was proposing a “war budget,” — 
for “ waging implacable war against poverty. ” The other 
accusations were answered forcibly by Mr. Winston Churchill, 
who frankly declared a man’s right to property dependent 
upon the way in which he obtained it: “Formerly,” said 
he, “the only question by the tax-gatherer was ‘How much 
have you got?’ . . . To-day ... we ask also, ‘How did you 
get it?’ ” 

The budget passed the Commons, but the Lords threw it out 
by a vote of five to one. For many centuries the upper House 
had not dared to interfere with a “money bill” (p. 310). Now 
was the time for the Commons to strike. The ministry “ dis¬ 
solved,”-in order to appeal to the nation for support in restrict¬ 
ing the veto of the House of Lords, and were indorsed by an 


SOCIAL INSURANCE 


531 


enlarged majority. The Lords now passed the budget, but 
threw out a bill against their veto. Another dissolution and a 
second election showed the Country resolutely behind the min¬ 
istry ; and Mr. Asquith, Prime Minister, now announced that, 
if necessary, 500 new peers would be created to pass the bill. 

Then the helpless Lords passed the law which reduced their House 
to a nonentity. Under this law of 1911, any money bill passed 
by the Commons becomes law within a month, whether 
the Lords pass it or not (and the Speaker of the Commons 
decides whether a bill is or is not a money bill) ; and any 
other bill passed by the Commons at three successive sessions be¬ 
comes law, in spite of a veto by the Lords. 

The Liberals then hastened to push through a program of 
social reform. In 1908 they had already passed an Old-age 
Pensions Act giving 5 sh. a week to every person over seventy 
years old with a yearly income of less than £160 — not as a dole 
of charity but as due reward in payment for a long life of service 
to the commonweal. An even more important move in the 
“war against poverty” was now made, in a national insurance 
act of 1911. This act compelled every worker with a yearly in¬ 
come of less than £160 to insure against sickness, and offered 
tempting inducements for such insurance to workers with higher 
incomes. (The benefits include weekly payments during sick¬ 
ness, free medical care in health, and free treatment in state hos¬ 
pitals when sick.) More radical still was a provision insuring 
workers in certain trades against unemployment. A workman 
out of work, without fault of his own, was promised a weekly 
sum for a term of fifteen weeks, and free transportation to a place 
| where the free labor-bureaus might find him new work. These 
acts placed Britain in the lead of the large nations in the matter 
of “social insurance.” 

Political reform, too, was pushed forward. In 1911 the maxi¬ 
mum duration of Parliaments was limited to five years, instead 
of seven, and salaries (£400 a year) were provided for members 
of Parliament. The same Parliament finally “disestablished” 
the English church in Wales (where the people were practically 
all dissenters) and at last passed Irish Home Rule. The Lords 


The Lords 
lose the 
veto 


Social in¬ 
surance, 
1911 


Other re¬ 
form before 
the War 






532 


RECENT REFORM IN ENGLAND 


Delay due 
to the 
World War 


Ireland 
since the 
war 


vetoed both measures in 1912 and in 1913, but in 1914 they be¬ 
came law over the veto. In Protestant Ulster, however, the 
Conservative “Unionists” threatened rebellion to prevent Home 
Rule going into effect. When, a few weeks later, the World War 
began, the leaders in this program of violence gave it up; but 
in return the ministry secured an act from Parliament postpon¬ 
ing the date when the Home-Rule law should go into operation. 

This delay was one of the most unhappy results of the great 
war. The old hatreds seemed about to be wiped out. Previous 
reforms by the British Parliament had disestablished the Eng¬ 
lish church in Ireland and had tried honestly to undo the injus¬ 
tice of centuries of English landlordism there by making the 
Irish peasants again the owners of their own land. A final act 
of justice seemed about to be performed, which would have left 
further Irish reform in Irish hands. The delay (along with some 
other blunders of the English government) produced bitter re~ 
sentment; and now the Sinn Feiners (p. 528) became the domi¬ 
nant party. On the whole the Irish still played their part in 
the great war; but some leaders spent their energies instead 
(sometimes even in plots with German autocracy) in attempts to 
set up an independent Irish nation. On the other hand, fight¬ 
ing Germany for her life, Britain used unwise severity in 
putting down such plots by death sentences. This made any 
righteous settlement grievously hard. 

It is most convenient to bring this story down to date at this 
point. In the first Parliamentary election after the war, the 
Sinn Feiners displaced the Home Rulers, winning nearly all 
the seats outside Ulster. Of course they then left their seats 
vacant. In 1920 Lloyd George carried a new Home-Rule Bill, 
providing two subordinate Irish parliaments. The Ulster par¬ 
liament organized; but the rest of Ireland would have nothing 
to do with the plan. For the next two years Ireland was ruled 
by martial law, with innumerable assassinations and riots and 
with frightful police retaliation. 

At last, however, England had to recognize that the great 
bulk of the Irish people really were united in their demand for 
a new national life, and English public opinion began to 


MISGOVERNMENT IN IRELAND 


533 


rebel against the government’s policy of armed repression. (No 
question, too, this change of feeling was hastened by the very 
strong and general sympathy for Ireland expressed in America— 
to whose public opinion England had grown sensitive.) At the 
same time, few Englishmen felt that in these days of airships 
and submarines, England could safely run the risk of the neigh¬ 
boring island becoming a base of operations for an enemy in 
some future war. Independence in all internal arrangements* 
and even in foreign trade, it was seen, had to be conceded, but 
along with retention of oversight over foreign political re¬ 
lations. 

And suddenly Lloyd George (to the dismay and wrath of the 
Tory elements in the coalition that had been supporting him) 
executed one more of his many political somersaults. He called 
into conference the Irish leaders whom just before he had been 
hunting down as traitors or felons, agreed with them upon a 
new plan of government by which Ireland became as independ¬ 
ent and self-governing as Canada or Australia, and carried that 
plan swiftly through the English Parliament. In Ireland an ex¬ 
treme party still stood out for entire separation from the British 
Empire, but, after some weeks of bitter debate, the Irish Free 
State parliament ratified this treaty on January 7, 1922. So, 
it was hoped, would end the story of one of the longest and crud¬ 
est injustices in history. 

Meantime suffrage reform had been completed in England. 
In 1912 the Asquith ministry introduced the “ Fourth Parlia¬ 
mentary Reform Bill,” extending the suffrage to all grown men 
and establishing the principle “ one man, one vote ”; but this 
bill was withdrawn, later, because of complications with the 
“ equal suffrage ” movement. 

Until 1870, women in England (and in most European lands) 
had fewer rights than in America. But when the English 
“ Board schools ” were created, women were given the right to 
vote for the Boards, and to serve upon them. In 1888 and 1894 
they were given the franchise for the County Councils and Parish 
Councils, subject to the tax-paying restrictions that applied 


The settle¬ 
ment of 
1922 


“ Votes for 
Women ” : 
the suffra¬ 
gettes 





534 


RECENT REFORM IN ENGLAND 


England 
long a land¬ 
lord’s coun¬ 
try 


to men. Then in 1893 the colony of New Zealand gave women 
full political rights, and in 1901 the new Australian Common¬ 
wealth did so (as the separate Australian States had done or at 
once did do). 

The action of these progressive colonies reacted upon Old 
England. 1 In 1905 numbers of women there exchanged peace¬ 
ful agitation for violence, in the campaign for the ballot. They 
made noisy and threatening demonstrations before the homes 
of members of the ministry; they broke windows; they in¬ 
vaded the House of Commons in its sittings ; and at last they 
began even to destroy mail boxes and burn empty buildings. 
The purpose of these suffragettes was to center attention on 
the demand “Votes for women,” since, the leaders believed, the 
demand was sure to be granted if only people could be kept 
thinking about it. When members of this party of violence were 
sent to jail, they resorted to a “starvation strike,” until the 
government felt compelled to release them — after trying for a 
time “forcible feeding.” For the time, however, the suffragettes 
lost public sympathy and alienated many Liberals, so that all 
franchise reform paused. But when the war of 1914 began, the 
suffragette leaders called upon their followers to drop all vio¬ 
lence while the country was in peril; and the devoted services of 
women to the country throughout the war removed the last oppo¬ 
sition to equal suffrage. In 1918 the “Fourth Reform Bill” 
became law, giving one vote to each man of 21 years of age and 
to each woman of 30. 

The early years of the twentieth century saw also another act 
of reparation to a large part of the English people — a matter 
which requires a backward glance. 

In 1700, in spite of the sixteenth-century inclosures (p. 365), 
England still had some 400,000 yeomen farmers — who, with 
their families, made nearly half the total population. But by 
1800, though population had doubled, this class of independent 
small holders had vanished, and rural England had become a 
country of great landlords. The change took place mainly dur- 

1 See the progress of equal suffrage in other European lands (pp. 578-582). 



A NEW YEOMAN CLASS 


535 


ing the final quarter of the century — just when the Industrial 
Revolution was well under way. The new profits in farming 
(p. 465) made landlords eager for more land. They controlled 
Parliament (p. 506); and that body passed law after law inclos¬ 
ing the “ commons” for the benefit of their class. A rhyme of the 
day expresses the feeling of the yeomen: 

“The law locks up the man or woman 
Who steals the goose from off the common; 

But leaves the greater villain loose 
Who steals the common from the goose.” 

The peasant farmers, having lost their old pasture land by 
these inclosures, could no longer maintain themselves against 
the competition of the privileged landlord, who also alone had 
money to buy the new machinery coming into use. Small farm¬ 
ers were compelled to sell out; while the merchants and new man¬ 
ufacturing capitalists were eager to buy, both because of the 
new profits in agriculture and because social position and 
political power in England in that day rested on ownership of 
land. The dispossessed yeomanry drifted to the new factory 
towns to swell the unhappy class there (p.475); or they remained 
to till the landlord’s land, living on his estate as “cottagers,” 
subject to removal at his order. 

Since this change, until very recently, the classes connected 
with the land in England have been three, — landlords, tenant- 
farmers, and laborers. The first class comprised a few thousand 
gentry and nobles. Each such proprietor divided his estate 
into “farms,” of from a hundred to three hundred acres, and 
leased them out to men with a little capital, who are known as 
“farmers.” This second class worked the land directly, with 
the aid of the third class, who had no land of their own but who 
labored for day-wages. 

The landlords as a rule prided themselves upon keeping up 
their estates. They introduced costly machinery and improved 
methods of agriculture more rapidly than small proprietors 
could, and they furnished some of the money necessary to put 
farms and buildings into good condition. Their own stately 
homes, too, encompassed by rare old parks, gave a beauty to 


Classes in 
rural Eng¬ 
land 




536 


RECENT REFORM IN ENGLAND 


Rebuilding 
the yeoman 
class 


rural England such as no other country knew. (During the 
World War, these glorious oaks were cut to furnish lumber 
for England ; and much of this beauty has been lost.) The farm¬ 
ers, compared with the farm-laborers, were an aristocratic and 
prosperous class; but, of course, they had always been largely 
influenced by their landlords. And they did not own their land. 
Peasants became free in England some centuries sooner than in 
France or Germany; but in no other European country have 
the peasants ever so completely ceased to be owners of the soil 
as in nineteenth-century England. In 1876 a parliamentary 
inquiry found only a quarter of a million (262,886) land-owners 
with more than an acre apiece (while 1200 men owned a fourth 
of all England). France, with about the same population, had 
more than twenty times as many land-owners as England had. 

For many years the Liberal party had tried to remedy this 
evil by parliamentary “Allotment acts” (1883, 1887, 1892); 
but the commissioners to carry out such laws always came 
from the landlord class, and little was done. But after local 
government became democratic (in 1888 and especially in 1894) 
the local councils began to buy land, or to condemn it at forced 
sales, and then to turn it over in small holdings to farm laborers 
on long leases or for purchase on easy terms. This movement 
has been tremendously accelerated by the need of taking care 
of unemployed returned soldiers since the World War; and the 
English people are coming once more to own England. 

For Further Reading. — Ogg, Social Progress in Contemporary 
Europe, 265-279; Larson, Short History of England, 617-639; G. H. 
Perris, Industrial History of Modern England; Carlton Hayes, British 
Social Politics. 





CHAPTER LVI 


ENGLISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 

Of all peoples the British have been the most successful in 
colonizing new lands and in ruling semi-barbarous races. In 
1776 England lost her most important colonies in North Amer¬ 
ica ; but the hundred years of war with France (1689-1815) gave 
her a new and vaster empire (pp. 399, 449). In the nineteenth 
century this empire was tremendously expanded again, — 
mainly by peaceful settlement and daring exploration. In 1914 
the British Empire covered nearly fourteen million square miles 
(nearly a fourth the land area of the globe), and its population 
numbered four hundred millions, or about one fourth of the 
whole human race. Forty-five millions of this number dwelt in 
the British Isles, and about fifteen millions more of English 
descent lived in self-governing colonies, — mainly in Canada, 
Australia, and South Africa. The other seven eighths of the 
vast population of the Empire are of non-European blood, and 
for the most part they are subject peoples. 

The outlying possessions are of two kinds: (1) those of conti¬ 
nental importance in themselves, such as Canada, India, Soudan, 
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the West Indian 
and South American colonies; (2) coaling stations and naval 
posts commanding the routes to these possessions, such as Gi¬ 
braltar, Malta, Cyprus, Ceylon, St. Helena, Trinidad, and scores 
more. 

Some Dominions are completely self-governing,, with no de¬ 
pendence upon Britain except in form. This is true of Canada, 
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The British min¬ 
istry appoints our Governor General, whose powers resemble those 
of our constitutional king in England. But the people of the 
Dominion elect the local legislature; and the real executive is the local 

537 


The 

British 

Empire 


The self- 
governing 
colonies 







538 


THE BRITISH EMPIRE 


Crown 

colonies 


India 


ministry, “responsible” to the legislature, as the ministry in 
England is to Parliament. 

In another group of colonies, the governors and officials, sent 
out from England, really control the whole government. This 
class of “crown colonies” comprises most of the naval posts, 
like Gibraltar, and also those colonies lying in the torrid zone, 
where the population is mainly non-European. 

India is a huge crown colony. The English ministry appoints 
a Viceroy and a Council, and these authorities name the subor¬ 
dinate officials for the subdivisions of the vast country. In the 
smaller districts the English officials are assisted by native of¬ 
ficers, and to some extent by elected councils of natives. Out¬ 
side the territory ruled directly by England there are also nearly 
a thousand native principalities, large and small, where 
the governments are really directed by resident English 
“ agents.” 

The constant petty wars which formerly were always wasting 
the land have been wholly done away with, and the terrible 
famines, which from time immemorial have desolated it at in¬ 
tervals, have become fewer, and on the whole, less serious. As 
a result, population has increased rapidly, — over fifty per cent 
in a century, — and to-day more than three hundred million 
people dwell in India. England has built railroads, and devel¬ 
oped cotton industries. Cotton mills give a Western appearance 
to parts of that ancient Oriental land. India has 800 news¬ 
papers (printed in twenty different languages); and 6,000,000 
students are being educated in schools of many grades. India 
is not taxed directly for the benefit of the treasury of the 
Empire, but her trade is a chief source of British wealth. 

The English have been making a notable attempt to introduce 
self-government and to get the natives to care for it. Towns 
are invited to elect municipal councils and to take charge of 
their streets and drainage and other matters of local welfare. 
Still it remains true that the Hindoos cannot understand 
Western civilization, and they do not like it. Moreover, in 
the great war, England failed to throw herself generously upon 






PLATE XCI 





































PLATE XCII 



Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. 


Railroad Station, Bombay, India. — The purpose of the building is 
due, of course, to English civilization; but the architecture is native to 
India. 















EGYPT 


539 


Indian loyalty; she refused commissions to Hindoos, and lost 
a possible chance to bind that people to her more closely. 

Dissatisfaction due to this mistaken English policy, and the 
new impulse given by the war to all nationalist movements, 
have led, since 1920, to the remarkable “Ghandist” movement 
for Indian independence — whose demands have been satisfied 
in part by the grant of a larger measure of self-government and 
the elevation of India to the status of a Dominion. 

Egypt in name was one of the tributary states of Turkey until Egypt 
1914. In fact, however, it had been independent for most of 
the nineteenth century, until, in 1881, a new master stepped in. 

The government had borrowed recklessly and spent wastefully 
and the land was misgoverned and oppressed by crushing taxa¬ 
tion. Then, in 1879, England and France jointly intervened 
to secure payment of debts due from the Egyptian Khedive to 
English and French capitalists. In 1881 came a native Eg}^p- 
tian rising against this foreign control. France withdrew. 

England stayed, restored order, and “occupied” the country. 

England had a special motive for staying. The Suez Canal And the 
had been opened in 1869. The gigantic undertaking had been Suez Canal 
financed by an international stock company. In 1875 Disraeli’s 
administration had bought from the Egyptian government 
its share of the Canal stock, and the English intervention in 
Egypt was largely to protect this property. Egypt has been 
made a base of operation, also, from which British rule has 
been extended into the Soudan (map facing p. 603) far toward 
Central Africa. 

After 1881, Egypt was really a British protectorate. The 
Khedive and all the machinery of the old government remained 
unchanged ; but an English agent was always present at the 
court “ to offer advice.” Many Englishmen entered the service 
of the Egyptian government, too; and all such officers looked 
to the English agent as their real head. In 1914, during the 
great European war, Britain announced a full protectorate. 

To Egypt itself, English rule was in many ways a decided 
good. The system of taxation was reformed, so that it became 







540 


THE BRITISH EMPIRE 


The winning 
of self-gov¬ 
ernment in 
Canada 


Australia 
begins as a 
convict 
camp 


less burdensome and more productive. The irrigation works 
were revived and improved, so that Egypt is richer, more 
populous, and with a more prosperous peasantry, than ever 
before. At the same time there has grown up a party among 
the Egyptian people who believe that their country is now quite 
fit to stand alone — and that it has a right to try. After the 
World War this situation led to occasional popular risings 
and stern repression. Finally in 1922, Britain acknowledged 
Egypt as a virtually independent kingdom. 

One of the most important features of the nineteenth century 
was the development of self-government in the Anglo-Saxon colonies 
of England. The loss of the American colonies had been a 
shock, and the next colony to show violent dissatisfaction had 
most of its wishes granted. 

This event took place in Canada in 1837. There were then 
only two “provinces” there. These thinly settled districts lay 
along the St. Lawrence, and were known as Upper 1 and 
Lower Canada. They had been governed for many years much 
as Massachusetts or Virginia was governed before 1776. The 
accession of Queen Victoria in England in 1837 was marred 
by their revolt. The rebellion was stamped out quickly; but 
Lord Durham, who was sent to investigate, recommended that 
the people of Canada should be given greater freedom in govern¬ 
ment. Parliament adopted this recommendation. By 1847 
the two provinces had obtained “ responsible” ministries. Great, 
Britain retains a veto upon Canadian legislation; but it is 
never used now. In 1850 a like plan for self-government was 
granted to the Australian colonies; in 1852 to New Zealand; 
and in 1872 to Cape Colony in Africa. 

The growth of the Australian colonies is a romantic story, 
worthy of a book to itself. England’s original claim rested on 
landings by Captain Cook in his voyage to the Pacific in 1769. 
No regular settlement was attempted for half a century, but in 
1787 England sent a shipload of convicts to the coast of.“New 

1 Upper Canada extended westward north of Lakes Ontario and Erie. 








The Taj Mahal, Agra, India. 

Built by Shah Jehan as a memorial to his favorite wife. 


























' 



















































. 








































































































AUSTRALIA AND SOUTH AFRICA 


541 


South Wales/’ and repeated this act from time to time for fifty 
years. After their terms of punishment, many ex-convicts be¬ 
came steady farmers, and finally the English government began 
to induce other settlers to “go out” by free grants of land and 
of farming implements. By 1821 the colony had a population 
of 40,000, and soon it became the main sheep-raising region of 
the world. 

By natural expansion, familiar to students of American his¬ 
tory, this colony of New South Wales sent out offshoots, so 
that by 1859 the continental island was occupied by six English 
colonies. These Australian commonwealths have been pioneers 
in democratic progress. Before 1900, every man and every 
woman in each state had the right to vote. The government in 
each state owned the railroads. The “Australian ballot” 
and the Torrens system of land transfer came from these col¬ 
onies; and a powerful Labor party in each has secured other 
radical reforms — which are seen better still perhaps in New 
Zealand. 

“New Zealand” comprises a group of islands 1200 miles east 
of Australia. Settled and governed for a time from New South 
Wales, it became a separate colony in 1840. In 1911 it 
contained a million English-speaking inhabitants. For many 
years it has been perhaps the most democratic state in the world. 
Women secured the right to vote in 1893. Large estates have 
been broken up into small holdings by heavy taxation. A state 
“ Farmers’ Loan Bank” set the example followed in part by the 
United States in 1913. The most advanced factory laws and 
“social insurance” laws in the world have been found in New 
Zealand since 1893 and 1898. 

South Africa was long an unsatisfactory part of the Em¬ 
pire for Englishmen to contemplate. England seized Cape 
Colony from the Dutch during the Napoleonic wars (p. 449). 
English settlers came in rapidly, but in 1834 a portion of the 
old Dutch colonists “trekked” (moved with families, ox- 
wagons, herds, and flocks) north into the wilderness, and set up 
an independent government in Natal. A few years later the 


English 
expansion 
in Australia 

Democratic 
progress in 
Australia 


New 
Zealand 
experiments 
in industrial 
democracy 


South 
Africa: 
the Boers 




542 


THE BRITISH EMPIRE 


The Boer 
War 


English col¬ 
onies organ¬ 
ized in great 
federal com¬ 
monwealths 


British annexed Natal, and the Dutch again trekked into what 
is known as the Orange Free State, and, in 1848, once more 
into the country beyond the Vaal River. These “Transvaal” 
Dutch became involved in serious difficulties with the native 
Zulus, whom they enslaved and treated brutally, and a native 
rising threatened to exterminate all Europeans in South Africa. 
Under Disraeli (p. 523) Britain interposed, put down the 
Zulus, and extended her authority once more over the Boer 
state. 

In 1880 the Boers rebelled, and with their magnificent marks¬ 
manship destroyed a British force at the Battle of Majuba Hill. 
Gladstone adopted the view that the Boers had been wrongfully 
deprived of their independence, and, without attempting to 
avenge Majuba Hill, he withdrew the British claims and left 
to the Boers of the Transvaal a virtual independence, under 
British “suzerainty.” The exact relations between the two 
countries, however, were not well defined. 

Soon afterward, gold was discovered in the Transvaal, and 
English and other foreigners rushed in, and soon outnumbered 
the Boer citizens. The Boers, who were simple farmers, unable 
themselves to develop the country, had at first invited immi¬ 
grants, but soon became jealous of their growing numbers and 
refused them all political rights. Britain attempted to secure 
better treatment for her citizens among these new settlers, 
and, under Salisbury’s Conservative and Imperialistic ministry, 
was bent upon reasserting her authority in general. The Boers 
declared war (1899). The Orange Free State joined the Trans¬ 
vaal, and the little republics carried on a marvelous and heroic 
struggle. They were finally beaten; and Britain adopted a 
generous policy toward the conquered, making large gifts of 
money to restock their ruined farms, and granting liberal self- 
government to her recent foes. 

During the last half-century the English-speaking colonies 
have made one more great advance in free government. At 
the time of the American Revolution, “Canada” meant merely 
modern Ontario and Quebec. Slowly it expanded westward 






NEW FEDERAL COMMONWEALTHS 543 

until now it forms a splendid band of provinces 1 spanning the 
continent. Meanwhile in 1867, the separate colonies of this 
British North America organized themselves into the Dominion 
of Canada. This is a federal state, somewhat like the United 
States, composed of nine provinces and two sparsely settled 
“ Territories.” The union has a Governor-General and a two- 
house legislature at Ottawa with a responsible ministry. Each 
of the nine provinces has its own Lieutenant-Governor, local 
legislature and ministry. The six Australian colonies debated a 
similar union for many years; and, after two federal conven¬ 
tions and a popular vote, it was finally established on the first day 
of the twentieth century. Finally, in 1909, the four South African 
states federated, with the name, “ The Union of South Africa .” 

Thus three new British nations were formed, — each at its 
birth large enough to command respect among the nations of 
the world (each one double the size of the United States at the 
time when its independence was achieved). 

The bond which holds together the Anglo-Saxon parts of the 
Empire is almost wholly one of feeling. Certainly, if either Can¬ 
ada or Australia wished to set up as an independent nation, 
Britain would not dream of trying to hold it. The British 
statesman, however, who should invite Canada to drop out of 
the Empire, or who should provoke her into doing so, would be 
universally regarded in Britain as a traitor to his race. 

There is no present danger of separation. The Dominions 
have had no cause to complain, except in one respect: namely* 
they have had no voice in deciding the policy of the Empire 
toward foreign nations. This defect has recently been removed 
in great part by the recognition of delegates from these Domin¬ 
ions at the Peace Congress of 1919 and in the League of Nations. 

1 Read Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Lady Merton , Colonist , to get the spirit 
of the Canada of the West. 


Ties be¬ 
tween 
Britain 
and her 
Dominions 





PART XIV - CONTINENTAL EUROPE, 
1871-1914 


CHAPTER LVII 


THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, 1871-1914 


The Gov¬ 
ernment of 
National 
Defense 


Second 
stage of 
the war 



The news of Sedan (p. 503) reached Paris, September 3, 1870. 
The city had been kept in ignorance of the previous disasters 

to French arms. Now it 
went mad with dismay 
and terror. The next day, 
aided by a mob invasion 
of the legislative cham¬ 
ber, a few Radical deputies 
tumultuously proclaimed 
the “ Third Republic,” and 
set up a provisional Gov¬ 
ernment of National De¬ 
fense. 

This government tried 
at first to secure an hon¬ 
orable peace with Ger¬ 
many, protesting, truly, 
that the French people 
had not willed the war. 
But when Prussia made 
it plain that she intended 

Gambetta Arousing the Provinces to punish France by tak- 
against the Prussian invader. From j n g large slices of her ter- 
a newspaper print of the day. . 

ntory, the conflict entered 
upon a new stage. Paris held out heroically through a four 
months’ siege; and Gambetta, a leading member of the Gov- 

544 












BISMARCK DICTATES THE PEACE 


545 



ernment of Defense, escaped from the beleaguered city in a 
balloon, to organize a magnificent uprising in the provinces. 
Exhausted France raised army after army, and amazed the 
world by her tremendous exertions. But in the end it became 
apparent that the iron grasp of the German armies could not 


be broken. The great population of Paris began to suffer the 
horrors of famine; the dog's and rats had been eaten; and on 
January 28 the city surrendered. 

There was no government in France with any real authority 
to make peace; and so an armistice was arranged, to permit 
the election of a National Assembly by manhood suffrage. The 
Assembly met toward the close of February, 1871, and created 
a provisional government by electing Thiers “Head of the Ex¬ 
ecutive Power of the French Republic.” To this government 
Bismarck dictated harsh terms of peace. The Prussians took 
Alsace and a part of Lorraine (with the great fortresses of Metz 
and Strassburg,) and a huge war indemnity of a billion dollars 
(some four times the cost of the war to Germany). 


Bismarck Dictating Terms to Thiers in 1871, — a painting by Von 
Werner. The figure back of the table is Thiers’ associate in the nego¬ 
tiation, Jules Favre, who had led the defense of Paris. 


The 

National 
Assembly 
of 1871 


Bismarck 
dictates 
harsh terms 









546 


THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC \ 


The “ Com¬ 
mune of 
Paris,” 1871 


Hardly had the National Assembly accepted this peace be¬ 
fore it had to meet a terrible rebellion at home. During the 
siege all adult males of Paris had been armed as National Guards. 
When the siege was over, every one who could get away from 
the distressed city did temporarily remove (including one hun¬ 
dred and fifty thousand of the wealthier National Guards) leaving 
Paris in control of the radical element. This element, too, 
kept its arms and its military organization; and it now set up 
a government of its own by choosing a large “ Central Com¬ 
mittee.” 

The National Assembly had established itself at Versailles. 
The radicals of Paris suspected it of wishing to restore the mon¬ 
archy. (In fact, a large majority of the members were Mon¬ 
archists, as events were soon to prove.) Moreover, the As¬ 
sembly had aggrieved the poorer classes of Paris: it had 
insisted upon the immediate payment of rents and other debts 
incurred during the siege ; and it did away in large measure 
with the pay of the National Guard, which since the surrender 
had been a kind of poor-relief. In addition' to all this, the Reds 
and Socialists still remembered bitterly the cruel middle-class 
vengeance of ’48 (p. 484). 

For two weeks Paris and Versailles faced each other like hos¬ 
tile camps. Then, indorsed by another popular election, the 
Central Committee set up the Commune and adopted the red flag. 

The supporters of this program wished the central govern¬ 
ment of France to be merely a loose federation of independent 
“ communes.” 1 In 1848 the Paris Radicals had learned that 
the country districts of France were overwhelmingly opposed 
to Socialism and to “Red Republicanism.” But if each city 
and village could become an almost independent state, then 
the Radicals hoped to carry out their socialistic policy in at 
least Paris and other large cities. 

1 So they called themselves “ Federals.” They are properly described also 
as “ Communards ” ; but the name “ Communist,” which is often applied to 
them, is likely to give a false impression. That latter name is generally used 
only for those who oppose private property. Many of the Communards 
were also Communists, but probably the majority of them were not. 



THE PARIS COMMUNE 


547 


But France, though still bleeding from invasion, refused to be Civil War 
dismembered by internal revolt. The excited middle class 
felt, moreover, that the institution of property itself was at 
stake, and they confounded all Communards together as crim¬ 
inals seeking to overthrow society. Like attempts to set up 



Destruction of the Vendome Column (p. 440) by Communards in 
1871; — a sketch by a contemporary Parisian artist. The Commu¬ 
nards declared the commemoration of victory in wars of conquest unworthy 
a free people. The monument was afterward restored. 

Communes took place at Marseilles, Toulouse, Narbonne, and 
Lyons; but they came to little, and the civil war was confined 
to Paris. April 2 the Versailles Assembly attacked Paris with 
the regular troops that had now returned from captivity in Ger¬ 
many. The struggle lasted two months and was utterly fero¬ 
cious. The Assembly refused to treat the Communards as 
regular combatants, and shot down all prisoners. In retaliation, 
the Commune seized several hundred hostages from the better 
classes left in Paris. These hostages, however, were not harmed 
until the Commune had been overthrown. Then, in the final 
disorder, an unauthorized mob did put sixty-three of them to 
death, — the venerable Archbishop of Paris among them. 

The bombardment of Paris by the Versailles government 
was far more destructive than that by the Germans had been. 





















548 


THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 


Another 
“ White ” 
Terror 


Finally the troops forced their way into the city, which was 
already in flames in many sections. For eight days more, des¬ 
perate fighting went on in the streets, before the rebellion was 
put down. Court-martial executions of large batches of pris¬ 
oners continued for many months, and some thirteen thousand 
survivors were condemned to transportation, before the rage of 
the victorious bourgeoisie was sated. There are few darker 
stains on the page of history than the cruelty and brutality of 
this middle-class vengeance. 


The Assem¬ 
bly monar¬ 
chic in feel¬ 
ing 


Monarchic 
factions fail 
to unite 


Thiers 

President, 

1871-1873 


The Assembly had been elected simply with a view to mak¬ 
ing peace. In choosing it, men had thought of nothing else. 
It was limited by no constitution, and it had no definite term of 
office. Certainly, it had not been commissioned to make a con¬ 
stitution or to continue to rule indefinitely; but it did both 
these things. 

At the election, people had chosen conservative candidates, 
because they wanted men who could be counted upon not to 
renew the war rashly. The majority of the members proved to 
be Monarchists; and they failed to set up a king, only because 
they were divided into three rival groups, — Imperialists (Bona- 
partists), Orleanists (supporters of the Count of Paris, grandson 
of Louis Philippe), and Legitimists (adherents of the Count 
of Chambord, grandson of Charles X). These three factions 
agreed in believing that a new election would increase the 
strength of the Republicans; and so for five years they resisted 
all demands of the Republican members for dissolution. 

However, now that peace had been made, and the rebellion 
crushed, the Assembly felt compelled to replace the “ provisional 
government” by some more regular form. Accordingly it made 
Thiers “ President of the Republic,” but it gave him no fixed term 
of office because the majority of the Assembly hoped to change 
to a monarchy at some favorable moment. 

This presidency lasted two years (1871-1873), and it saw 
France freed from foreign occupation. Germany had expected 
the vast war indemnity (which was to be paid in installments) 
to keep France weak for a long period; and German garrisons 


FAILURE OF THE MONARCHISTS 


549 


were to remain in France until payment was complete. But 
France astonished all beholders by her rapid recovery. In 
eighteen months the indemnity was paid in coin, and the 
last German soldier had left French soil. The government 
loans (p. 553) were taken up enthusiastically by all classes 
of Frenchmen, — in great measure by the industrious and 
prosperous peasantry. 

In 1873 a momentary coalition of Monarchists and Radicals 
in the Assembly forced Thiers to resign. In his place the Mon¬ 
archists elected Marshal Mac Mahon, an ardent Orleanist. For 
some months a monarchic restoration seemed almost certain. Le¬ 
gitimists and Orleanists had at last united in support of the 
Count of Chambord, who agreed to adopt the Count of Paris as 
his heir. The Monarchists had the machinery of the government 
in their hands, and were just ready to declare the Bourbon heir 
the King of France, when the two factions split once more on the 
question of a symbol. The Orleanists wished to keep the tri¬ 
color, the flag of the 1830 Monarchy. But the Count of Cham¬ 
bord denounced the tricolor as the “symbol of revolution,” 
and declared that he would not give up the white lilies of the 
old Bourbon monarchy, the symbol of divine right. On this 
scruple the chance of the Monarchists came to shipwreck. 

Then, in 1875, despairing of an immediate restoration, the As¬ 
sembly adopted a constitution. Modified slightly by later amend¬ 
ments, this is the present constitution of the French Republic. 
It has never been submitted to the people. 

The constitution is very brief, because the Monarchist major¬ 
ity preferred to leave the details to be settled by later legisla¬ 
tion, hoping to adapt them to a kingly government. The first 
draft spoke of a “Chief Executive.” An amendment changed 
this title to “President of the Republic”; but the change was 
adopted by a majority of only one in a vote of 705. (In 1884 
a new amendment declared the republican form of government 
not subject to revision.) 

The legislature consists of two Houses. The Senate contains 
three hundred members, holding office for nine years, one third 
going out each third year. (At first, seventy-five of the mem- 


Last chance 
of the Mon¬ 
archists : 
MacMa- 
hon’s presi¬ 
dency 


The Consti¬ 
tution of the 
Third Re¬ 
public 






550 


THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 


The Re¬ 
public se¬ 
curely es¬ 
tablished 


bers were to hold office for life, but in 1884 an amendment de¬ 
clared that no more life members should be chosen.) The Dep 
uties (lower House) are chosen by manhood suffrage for a term 
of four years. To amend the constitution, or to choose a Presi¬ 
dent, the two Houses meet together, at Versailles, away from possi¬ 
ble disturbances in Paris. In this joint form, they take the 
name National Assembly. A majority vote of this National As¬ 
sembly suffices to change the constitution. 

The executive consists of a 'president, elected for seven years 
by the National Assembly, and of the ministry he appoints. 
The president has much less power than the president of the 
United States. The ministers wield enormous power. They 
direct all legislation, appoint a vast multitude of officers, 
and carry on the government. Nominally, the president ap¬ 
points the ministers; but, in practice, he must name those who 
will be acceptable to the Deputies. The ministry is obliged to 
resign when it ceases to have a majority behind it. 

Neither France nor any other European republic gives to its judi¬ 
ciary the power to veto laws as unconstitutional (as the American 
Supreme Court may do). The legislature itself is the sole judge 
of the constitutionality of its acts. 

Even after the adoption of the constitution, the Assembly did 
not give way at once to a new legislature. But almost every 
“by-election” (to fill a vacancy) resulted in a victory for the 
Republicans, and by 1876 that party had gained a majority 
of the seats. It at once dissolved the Assembly, and the new 
elections created a House of Deputies two thirds Republican. The 
Senate, with its seventy-five life-members, was still monarchic; 
and, with its support, MacMahon tried to keep a Monarchist 
ministry. But under the leadership of the fiery Gambetta, 
the Deputies withheld all votes of supply, until MacMahon ap¬ 
pointed a ministry acceptable to it. In 1879 the renewal of 
one third the Senate gave the Republicans a majority in that 
House also, and, soon after, MacMahon resigned. Then the 
National Assembly elected a Republican president. 

For nearly a century, France had passed from revolution to 
revolution, until the world came to doubt whether any French 





LOCAL GOVERNMENT 


551 


government could be stable. The present constitution of France Stability of 
is the eleventh since 1789. Four times between 1792 and 1871 j^ e Re P ub - 
had the Republicans seized Paris; three times they had set up 
a republic; but never before had they truly represented the 
deliberate determination of the whole people. In 1879 they 
came into power, not by violence, but by an eight years’ con¬ 
stitutional struggle against the political tricks of an accidental 
Monarchist majority. This time it was the Republicans whom 
the conservative, peace-loving peasantry supported. Even the 
World War did not bring any thought of a change in govern¬ 
ment. 

The important units of local government are the Depart- Local 
ments and Communes (p. 418). For each Department the g° vernment 
Minister of the Interior appoints a prefect. Resides general 
executive power, this officer appoints police, postmen, and other 
local authorities. In each Department there is also a general 
council ( elected by manhood suffrage), with control over local 
taxation — except that its decisions are subject to the approval 
of the central government. Indeed, the central government may 
dissolve a Departmental council at any time, and order a new 
election. 

The Communes of France (since the recovery of Alsace-Lor¬ 
raine in the World War) number about forty thousand. They 
vary in size from great cities to rural villages with only two or 
three hundred people. Each has a mayor and a council. Un¬ 
til 1884, the mayor was appointed by the Minister of the Interior; 
since 1884, he has been elected by the municipal council. The 
central government, however, may revise his acts or even re¬ 
move him from office. The municipal council is elected by 
manhood suffrage; but its acts are subject to the approval of 
the prefect of the Department or of the central government. 

Such conditions do not seem very encouraging at first to a 
Canadian student; but, as compared with the past in France, 
the situation is full of promise. Political interest is steadily 
growing in the Communes, and Frenchmen are learning more and 
more to use the field of self-government open to them. 





552 


THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 


No bill of 
rights 


Administra 
tive courts 


Education 


Industry 


Unlike the previous French constitutions, the present con¬ 
stitution has no “bill of rights That is, it has no provisions 
regarding jury trial, habeas corpus privileges, or the right of 
free speech. Even if it had, the courts could not protect the 
individual from arbitrary acts of the government by appealing 
to such provisions, because, in case of conflict between a citizen 
and the government, the suit is tried, not in the ordinary courts, 
but in administrative courts , made up of government officials. 
As a rule, the administrative courts mete out fair treatment; 
but in case of any supposed danger to the government, they 
may become its champions — at the expense of the rights of 
a citizen. 1 It is only too true, however, that in times of excited 
feeling other democracies with long bills of rights have shown 
quite as serious a disregard of personal liberty. 

The zeal of the early Revolutionists for education (p. 429) 
was not given time to produce results; and the restored mon¬ 
archy gave little attention to public schools. In 1827 a third 
of the Communes of France had no primary school whatever, and 
nearly a third of the population could neither read nor write. 
The real growth of popular education dates from the Third 
Republic. To-day, in every Commune there is a primary school 
or group of schools. Education is free and compulsory, and 
the central government appoints teachers and regulates the 
courses of study. Each Department has an excellent system 
of secondary schools, called lycees; and the higher institutions 
are among the most famous in the world. 

The advance of industry in the forty-three years between 
the Franco-Prussian and the World War was enormous. The 
yearly production of wealth tripled (though population increased 
very slightly). Coal mines turned out four times as much coal 
in 1911 as in 1871, and the number of patents granted in 1911 
was five times as many as in 1871. (It is to be kept in mind, 
too, that Germany had taken from France — in Alsace-Lor¬ 
raine — its richest iron districts.) 


1 Special report: the Dreyfus trials. 


EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 


553 


This progress is the more remarkable when we remember The French 
that France is 'preeminently an agricultural country. The pecul- peasantry 
iar thing about French society, down to the World War, was 
the number of small land-owners and the prosperity of this 
landed peasantry. In 1900, more than half the entire popu¬ 
lation lived on the soil, and three fourths the soil was under 
crops. The great mass of cultivators owned little farms of 
from five to fifty acres. France supplied her population with 
foodstuffs, and exported a large surplus. The subdivision of 
the soil was carried so far that it was difficult to introduce the 
best machinery (though neighborhood associations were being 
founded to own machinery in common). The peasant was in- Population 
telligent, industrious, thrifty, prosperous, happy, and conserv- stati <>nary 
ative. He wished to educate his son, and he had a high standard 
of living, compared with other European peasantry. With five 
or six children, a farmer owning five or ten acres found it al¬ 
most impossible to keep up this standard, and to leave his chil¬ 
dren as well off as he himself had been. Therefore the peasantry 
have not washed large families, and for a long time population 
has been almost stationary. (By the census of 1911 it was a 
little under forty millions, and the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, 
with its two millions of people, somewhat more than balances 
in numbers the losses in the War.) 

Before the War this population was a “ nation of little savers,” A nation of 
and consequently a nation of money lenders. Through the ca p|JaUsts ” 
nineteenth century, England had been the world’s banker. In 
1900, France was beginning to hold that place. After 1900, 
when a government wished to “float” a huge loan, or when 
capitalists wished to finance some vast industrial enterprise, 

France commonly furnished the cash. England still had more 
wealth than France; but it was largely “fixed” in long-time 
investments, while French wealth was held by a great number 
of people of small means, all seeking constantly for investments. 

The French national debt was not held, like the American or 
the English, in 1911, by men of great wealth, in large amounts, 
but by some 3,000,000 French people, — shopkeepers, clerks, 
artisans, day-laborers, small farmers, — in small amounts. 





554 


FRANCE SINCE 1871 


French poli¬ 
tics : shifting 
ministries 


Loss of the 
old colonies 


A new 
colonial 
empire since 
i8eo 

French 

Algeria 


The French government under the Third Republic had encour¬ 
aged this tendency of the workingman to ‘‘invest” savings, 
by putting bonds on sale at every village post office in small 
denominations — as low even as one franc (20 cents). (This 
admirable plan of encouraging all citizens to become “bond¬ 
holders” — and “stockholders in the national prosperity” — 
was adopted by the United States during the World War.) 

German invasion in 1914-1918 has made much of the richest 
part of France a hideous desert, and has drained the rest of 
workers and of wealth. Up to this writing (May, 1923) the 
return of material prosperity is sadly delayed, owing to the 
chaotic conditions in the economic life of Europe. 

Politics in France have been, much of the time, upon a lower 
level than business life. The best minds of France have not 
been present in the Assembly. That body has been broken 
into many parties, and the ministries have been kaleidoscopic 
in their changes. This meant chronic confusion and inefficiency; 
and the government has suffered from red tape and from a 
widespread taint of corruption in politics. After 1900 the 
Socialists gained power rapidly; and, in the election of 1914, 
they became the largest of .the nine groups in the Assembly. 
All recent ministries had contained leading Socialists, but the 
war called back to power more conservative statesmen — in 
the war ministry of Clemenceau, “ the Tiger.” 

About 1750 France bade fair to be the great colonial power 
of the world. Thirteen years later saw her stripped of all 
possessions outside Europe, except a few unimportant islands in 
the Indian Ocean and in the Antilles and some small ports in 
India (p. 399). In the nineteenth century France became again a 
colonial power. In 1830 the government of Charles X took ad¬ 
vantage of an insult by the Dey of Algiers to a French consul 
to seize territory in North Africa. In the middle of the cen¬ 
tury this foothold had grown, through savage and bloody wars, 
into complete occupancy of Algeria. The Third Republic intro¬ 
duced civil rule, and since 1880, Algeria has been not so much 




COLONIAL EMPIRE 


555 


a foreign possession, or a colony, as a part of France separated 
from the rest by a strip of sea. The French make only a small 
part of the population, it is true, but the country is orderly and 
civilized. The settled portion, near the coast, is divided into 
Departments, like those in European France, with represent¬ 
atives in the French legislature. The inland parts are still 
barbarous and disorderly, but to this long-desolate Barbary 
Coast, French rule has restored the fertility and bloom that be¬ 
longed to it as the garden of the ancient Roman world. 

Nearly all the rest of the vast French colonial empire has been And Tunis 
secured since the Franco-Prussian War. Algeria was one of 
five great states on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, — Mo¬ 
rocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt. All five had long been 
virtually independent Mohammedan kingdoms, though in name 
they had remained part of the decaying Turkish Empire. And 
all five, until Europeans stepped in, were in a vicious state of 
misrule, disorder, and tyranny. We have seen how in 1881 
Egypt fell under Britain’s “protection.” France quickly 
regretted that she had so easily given up her claim to share in 
that rich land, and in the same year she seized gladly upon dis¬ 
orders in Tunis as an excuse for extending her authority, from 
Algeria eastward, over that country. In 1904 she began in And 
like fashion to extend her sway in North Africa toward the west; Morocco 
establishing a protectorate over part of Morocco. 

Before seizing upon Tunis in 1881 — an act sure to arouse German 
violent resentment in Italy, which looked upon Tunis as her nvalry 
own prey — the French government thought it necessary to 
lay its plans before Bismarck. That astute statesman at that 
time had not begun to have any colonial ambition for Germany, 
and he encouraged the French project, welcoming the chance 
to arouse hostility between France and Italy. (Indeed, with 
characteristic crookedness, he at the same moment encouraged 
Italy to hope for Tunis.) Soon afterward, however (p. 567), 

Germany herself entered the race for colonial empire; and in 
1911 an extension of French rule in Morocco almost plunged 
Europe into war. William II of Germany sent a warship to 




556 


FRANCE SINCE 1871 


Other 
French 
colonies in 
Africa 


And in Asia 


French co¬ 
lonial ad¬ 
ministration 


Church 
and state 


Agadir, a harbor of Morocco, and “ rattled the saber in the scab¬ 
bard.” But Britain supported France; and Germany was 
finally appeased by European consent to her seizing territory 
in the Kamerun (West Africa) and by the cession to her of part 
of the French Congo territory. 

France has huge possessions in other parts of Africa, on both 
the east and west coasts, besides the great island of Madagascar 
(map facing p. 603). In America she holds Guiana (Cayenne), 
with a few ports in the Antilles. In Oceanica, between 1884 
and 1887 she obtained New Caledonia and several smaller 
islands. Her most important colonies, outside Africa, are 
in the peninsula of Indo-China in southeastern Asia. Na¬ 
poleon III seized Cambodia and Cochin China; and the Third 
Republic, with little more scruple, seized Tonking in 1884, Anam 
in 1886, and Siam to the Mekong in a savage war in 1893-1896. 
For many years, moreover, the “imperialistic” forces in France 
(“chauvin” politicians and some large business interests) 
sought an indirect control in Syria. Syria is now under a French 
“ mandate.” 

At the same time, France is not herself a colonizing nation — 
any more than in the seventeenth century (p. 388). Even in 
the settled portions of her colonial empire the European popu¬ 
lation is small. The total area of the colonial possessions is 
about four million square miles, of which about three and a 
half million are in Africa. The orderly regions have a share in 
self-government, and most of them have representatives in the 
legislature at Paris. 

Down to the World War, the most critical contest in the Third 
Republic was the century-old struggle between church and 
state for the control of education and indeed of other family 
relations. At the creation of the Third Republic, the state 
paid the expenses of all organized churches, Catholic, Protes¬ 
tant, or Mohammedan. Seventy-eight per cent of the French 
people in 1900 were members of the Catholic church ; 1 but, even 

1 Mohammedanism is confined to Algeria. Two per cent of the people 
of France in 1900 were Protestants. Nearly twenty per cent had no church 
connection. 




CHURCH AND STATE 


557 


in so strongly Catholic a land, the people felt much distrust of 
political influence from the Catholic clergy. 

This was largely because during the strenuous period from 
1871 to 1879 the clergy threw their influence on the side of the 
Monarchists. Cried Gambetta, in one of his fiery orations, —- 
“Clericalism! That is our foe.” Accordingly, when the Re¬ 
publicans came into power, they hastened to weaken the church 
by taking from it its ancient control over the family. Marriage 
was made a civil contract (to be performed by a magistrate) 
instead of a sacrament; divorce was legalized, despite the 
teachings of the Catholic church against it; and all religious 
orders were forbidden to teach in either public or private schools. 

For a time, extreme Catholics were driven into opposition 
to the government; but the wise Pope Leo XIII moderated 
the bitterness of the political warfare by recommending that 
French Catholics “rally” to the Republic and try to get the 
privileges they needed by influencing legislation (1893). On 
its side, the government then for a time let some of the anti¬ 
clerical laws rest unenforced. But about 1900, the Repub¬ 
licans and Radicals became alarmed again at the evidence of 
Monarchic sympathies still* existing among the aristocracy, 
and even among army officers, and convinced themselves that 
these sympathies were due to the remaining clerical influence 
in the schools. In the years 1901-1903, thousands of church 
schools were closed by the police, sometimes amid riots and 
tumults. Pope Pius X protested, and deposed two French 
bishops who had acquiesced in the government’s policy. The 
government recalled its ambassador from the papal court, and 
prepared a plan which it called “separation of church and 
state.” 

A law of 1905 declared the nation the owner of all church 
property in France. Each religious community, however, was 
invited to organize as a self-supporting “cultural association,” 
with the permanent use of its old property. Protestant churches 
complied; but such organization was forbidden to Catholics 
by the pope as incompatible with the principles of the church. 

In the elections of 1906, however, the nation gave an over- 








558 


FRANCE SINCE 1871 


whelming indorsement to the whole anti-clerical policy; and 
then the government evicted great numbers of Catholic clergy 
from their homes (for refusing to obey the law of 1905) and 
banished multitudes of monks from the country. In 1914, when 
the great European war began, two thousand of these banished 
priests returned to France to fight in the ranks against the in¬ 
vaders of their country. 

For Further Reading. — Hazen, Bourgeois, or Hayes. On the 
constitution, Lowell’s Greater European Governments or Sait’s Govern¬ 
ment and. Politics of France. For recent changes, The Statesman’s Year 
Book or The World Almanac. 













% 


































































































































































CHAPTER LVIII 


THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1871-1918 

The Germanic Confederation of 1814-1867 was a loose con¬ 
federacy of sovereign states. The German Empire of 1871- 
1918 was a federal state. The central government was strength¬ 
ened immensely by the change, and for nearly half a century it 
grew steadily in power. 

But this German “federated” Empire was made up not of A despotia 
republican states but of monarchic states (4 kingdoms, 18 federal state 
duchies, 3 “free cities”). The controlling body in the Empire 
was the Federal Council, consisting during most of its history 
of 56 delegates, appointed by the rulers of the different states The Federal 
and directed from day to day by those princes. This council Council 
(Bundesrath) prepared measures for the legislature, and had a 
veto upon all laws. 

The imperial legislature was the Reichstag — a one-House The 
assembly elected by manhood suffrage. Of the 397 delegates, Reichsta s 
Prussia had 236. Practically, the power of this assembly was 
limited to accepting or rejecting proposals from the Bundesrath. 

Even its control over taxation was incomplete. Most revenue 
measures were standing laws. That is, once passed, they could 
not be changed without the consent of the Bundesrath. The 
imperial ministry, appointed by the Emperor, was called “re¬ 
sponsible,” but not in the English sense: it was not obliged 
to resign when defeated in the Reichstag. 

The imperial government was frugal and efficient. It made The Empire 
justice in the courts easy to secure; it guarded against food 
adulteration long before the rest of the world did; and in other 
ways it zealously protected the public health. But alongside Militarism 
this watchful paternalism, there were grievous faults. Ger- 

559 










560 


THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1871-1918 


Wo security 
for personal 
liberty 


The 

Emperor 
an autocrat 


The Prus¬ 
sian consti¬ 
tution, 
1848-1918 


Divine- 

right 

emperors 


Kaiser 
William XI 


many had been made by violence, and the result showed in the 
spirit of militarism and in the predominance of the methods of the 
drill sergeant. Police rule was all-pervading. Said a keen for¬ 
eign observer (1896): " To live in Germany always seems 
to me like a return to the nursery.” Even worse was the con¬ 
temptuous and oftentimes brutal treatment of civilians by army 
officers. For years the newspapers contained reports of gross 
and unprovoked insults, and sometimes of violent assaults, 
by officers upon unoffending citizens, for which it was difficult 
to obtain redress in the courts. There was no security for per¬ 
sonal rights. Trial by jury, freedom of the press, freedom of 
public meetings, and free speech existed only in a limited degree. 
To criticize the emperor in the press, ever so lightly, was likely 
to land the offender in jail for a considerable term. 

In theory, the emperor was only the life president of the 
federation. But this life presidency was hereditary in the kings 
of Prussia. The emperor was head of the army; and through 
his control over the ministry and over so large a part of the Bun- 
desrath (he appointed the large Prussian delegation) he con¬ 
trolled all foreign relations and virtually held a veto upon all 
domestic legislation. He held still mightier authority in the Em¬ 
pire from his position as despotic ruler of Prussia. Prussia had 
three fifths of the population of the Empire, and more than 
that part of the power. Her divine-right “constitution” was 
the one “granted” by the king in ’48 (p. 488). It left the king 
virtually an autocrat in Prussia ; and Prussia’s power made him 
an autocrat in the Empire. 

At his coronation, William I took the crown from the com¬ 
munion table, declaring, “ The crown comes only from God, and 
I have received it from His hands.” In 1888 William was suc¬ 
ceeded by his son, Frederick III. Frederick was an admirer 
of parliamentary government upon the English pattern; but 
his three months’ reign brought no change in the government. 

William II, the son of Frederick, returned to the principles 
of his grandfather. As a youth, he had been a great admirer of 
Bismarck; but it soon became plain that the two men were each 
too masterful to work together, and in 1890 the emperor curtly 


WILLIAM II 


561 


dismissed the chancellor from office. Thereafter, William II 
himself directed the policy of the Empire, and he was a greater 
force in European politics than any other sovereign in Europe. 
He believed thoroughly in the “divine-right” theory, and he 
repeatedly stated it in as striking a form as ever did James I 
of England or Louis XIV of France, two or three centuries ago. 
In the Visitors’ Book in the Town Hall of Munich, he wrote, 
“The will of the king is the supreme law.” In an address to 
his army, he said: “ On me, as German Emperor, the spirit of 
God has descended. I am His sword and His Vice-regent.” 
“All-Highest” was a recognized form of address for the em¬ 
peror. And the phrase ironically attributed to him — “ Me 
und Gott” — is no great exaggeration of the patronizing way 
in which he often referred to the Almighty as a partner in his 
enterprises. 

Some survey like the foregoing is needful to guard us against 
the “tyranny of names.” England and Germany in 1914 were 
both “ constitutional monarchies” ; but that does not mean that 
they were in any way alike, even in government. They stood 
at the two poles of government. England had a democratic 
government, in which the monarchic and aristocratic survivals 
were practically powerless — mere matters of form; the Ger¬ 
man Empire was one of the most absolute autocracies in the 
world. England’s ideals were based upon industry and world- 
peace : Germany’s ideals were based upon militarism and con¬ 
quest. Englishmen thought of the “state” as a condition for 
the full development of the individual man: Germans thought 
of individual men as existing primarily for the sake of the ab¬ 
solutist state. 

This divine-right militaristic autocracy was upheld (1) by the 
landed squires, or junkers, and (2) by the capitalists. The 
junkers were rural and largely a Prussian class, especially strong 
toward the east. The capitalists were a new class in Germany. 
The “industrial revolution,” with the factory system, which 
had grown up in England before 1800 and in France by 1825, 


Germany 
and England 


Junkers and 
capitalists 









The Prus¬ 
sian army 
system 


Europe 
adopts the 
German 
army sys¬ 
tem 


562 THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1871-1918 

did not begin to make headway in Germany until nearly 1870. 
Then, indeed, manufactures and trade grew by leaps — aided 
by the coal and iron of Alsace-Lorraine and by subsidies from 
the huge war indemnity just then exacted of France. 1 The 
whole artisan class was trained to “efficiency” in trade schools, 

— which were distinctly class schools, suited on this German 
plan to an undemocratic land only, in which the son of an artisan 
must look for no “higher” station than his father. And on 
the other hand there appeared a new figure in German life, the 
princely manufacturing capitalist. After 1880, the thousands 
of this class took their place — alongside the junker nobility 

— as a chief support of German autocracy, with a vivid expecta¬ 
tion of favors to be received in form of special privileges. 

German autocracy had also its physical arm. After 1866, 
the Prussian army system was extended over all Germany. At 
twenty each man was compelled to enter the ranks for two years’ 
active service. For five years more he was a member of the 
“active reserves,” with two months in camp each year. These 
reserves were to be called out for regular service in case of war. 
For twelve years more he was listed in the territorial reserve 

— liable for garrison duty in time of war, and even for front 
rank service in special need. Exemption from training was 
usually allowed to the only son of a dependent widow and to 
those unfit because of physical defects. 

The Prussian victories of 1866 and 1870 convinced all Europe 
of the superiority of this system over the old professional 
armies, and nearly every state in Europe soon adopted it, with 
slight variations. The burden was enormous — the most woeful 
waste of human energy the world ever saw — and the direct 
cost was far less than the indirect cost involved in withdraw¬ 
ing so large a part of each man’s best years from productive 

1 All this meant a tremendous growth of cities. Hamburg grew from 
350,000 people in 1870 to 1,000,000 in 1910; Berlin from 820,000 to 
2,000,000; Essen from 50,000 to 300,000; while many wholly new centers 
of trade appeared where had been only farming hamlets. The population 
of the Empire doubled in these forty years, and all this increase was a city 
increase. 










MILITARISM 


563 


work. (Britain, trusting to her navy, and the United States, 
trusting to her position, were the only large countries that dared 
refuse the crushing burden — and for England the cost of her 
navy was almost as serious.) 

Worse still, this militarism was a constant temptation to 
war. Rulers could not but regret leaving their costly tools 
to rust unused. Thousands of ambitious young officers in every 
land necessarily looked forward to war as a chance to justify 
their training and their cost, to the nation. And in the whole 
population, militarism developed a disposition to trust to force 
in dealing with other nations, rather than to good-will and reason. 

Even worse, militarism develops a state of mind hostile to 
true democracy at home. Men come to exalt the army above 
the civil authorities, and to adopt a servile attitude toward 
autocratic army officers. All these evils were found in surprising 
degree in the German Empire, as compared with the rest of 
Europe, and in Prussia as compared with the rest of Germany. 

For nearly twenty years after the Empire was established, Bis- Bismarck’s 
march directed its course. The “Iron Chancellor” was a ruler rule 
of tremendous power of will; but he carried his policy of “ blood 
and iron” into civil affairs — and failed. Three contests fill 
the period. 

1. The Empire had brought Catholic and Protestant Ger- The strug- 
many under one government — which prepared the way for cath- 
conflict. The first struggle, however, came within the Catho- olic 
lie church. In 1870 a General Council of the church declared church 
the pope infallible (incapable of error) in promulgating doc¬ 
trines of faith and morals. Many of the German Catholic 
clergy refused assent to this “innovation” in doctrine (as 
they regarded it) and took the name of Old Catholics. The 
orthodox bishops attacked this sect vigorously, and expelled 
instructors in the schools who did not teach the dogma of 
infallibility. 

Then Bismarck stepped in to defend the Old Catholics and 
to assert the supremacy of the state over the church. Under 
his influence, the legislature expelled the Jesuits from Germany, 








564 


THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1871-1918 


Bismarck 
and the 
Socialists 


Repres¬ 
sion fails 
again 


and took marriage and all education, private and public (even 
the education of the clergy) from the control of the church. To 
enforce these laws, priests were deprived of office, and were 
even punished by long terms of imprisonment or by exile. 
When the pope declared that the anti-clerical laws ought not 
to be obeyed, Bismarck confiscated ecclesiastical salaries 
and took into the government’s hands all the property and 
revenues of the church. From 1875 to 1879, one fifth the par¬ 
ishes in Prussia had no clergy; schools and seminaries were 
closed; chairs of theology in the universities were vacant; 
houses of the clergy were raided by the police; and numbers 
of men of devoted Christian lives and broad scholarship lan¬ 
guished in prison. 

This persecution, however, steadily lost favor among the 
people. A strong and growing “Catholic” party in the Reichs¬ 
tag, “the Center ,” hampered all Bismarck’s projects; and finally 
he was forced to make terms with it, in order to secure the legis¬ 
lation he desired against the Socialists and for tariffs. In 1880 
the government began its retreat; and it abandoned step by step 
every position it had assumed in the quarrel. 

2. Socialism did not become prominent in Germany until 
after 1848. German Socialism was founded by Karl Marx 
(p. 477), but its teachings were thrown among the masses by 
Lassalle, a brilliant writer and orator. When manhood suf¬ 
frage was introduced (in the election of the Reichstag of the 
North German Confederation), the Socialists got their first 
chance. They held eight seats in the Reichstag of 1867. Faith¬ 
ful to their doctrine of human brotherhood, these men in 1870 
earnestly opposed the war with France, especially after it be¬ 
came a war for conquest. This “unpatriotic” attitude resulted 
in a check. The leaders were tried for treason and condemned 
to years of imprisonment; and in the first Imperial Reichstag 
(1871) the party had only two representatives. But in 1874 
the number had risen to nine, and in 1877, to twelve. 

Bismarck then began to feel it needful to put down Socialism. 
His first effort to secure repressive laws from the Reichstag failed, 
but it called out two attempts by Socialist fanatics to assas- 








BISMARCK AND SOCIALISM 


565 


sinate the emperor (1877, 1878). This played into Bismarck’s 
hands and made the Reichstag ready to go all lengths against 
the “Red Specter.” New laws gave the government authority 
to dissolve associations, break up meetings, confiscate publi¬ 
cations, and imprison or banish suspects by decree. Not con¬ 
tent with these extraordinary powers, Bismarck made them 
retroactive , and at once banished from Berlin sixty or 
seventy men who had formerly been connected with the So¬ 
cialists. 

The Socialists met this ruthless severity with as much forti¬ 
tude as the Catholic clergy had shown in their conflict. So¬ 
cialism for a time became an underground current. In 1881, 
just after the beginning of the repressive legislation, the Socialist 
vote fell off somewhat; but in the election of 1884 it had risen 
to over half a million — much more than ever before — and 
in 1887 it was over three fourths of a million. Then the re¬ 
pressive laws were allowed to expire. Again the Iron Chan¬ 
cellor had failed. 

During the latter part of the struggle, Bismarck used also a 
wiser policy. He tried to cut the ground from under the feet of 
the Socialist agitators by improving the condition of the work¬ 
ing classes, along lines pointed out by the Socialists themselves. 
In 1884 he said, — “ Give the workingman the right to work 
while he is well, and assure him care when he is sick, and main¬ 
tenance when he is old, and the Social Democrats will get no 
hold upon him.” In accordance with this program, Bismarck 
favored the introduction of great public works to afford employ¬ 
ment, and he created a state fund to help insure the injured 
and the aged. 

In this “ Social insurance,” Germany was a pioneer — though 
England and France afterwards passed by her. The legislation, 
however, did not weaken Social Democracy. Indeed the So¬ 
cialists railed at it as fear-inspired, poor-law legislation. To 
Bismarck, and to William II, it was the duty of the divine-right 
government to care for the laborer. To the Social Democrats, 
it was the right of the laborers themselves to control the govern¬ 
ment and to care for themselves through it. 


Bismarck 
tries state 
socialism 








566 


THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1871-1918 


Growth of 
the Social¬ 
ist party 


Bismarck 
and the 
frontier 
peoples 


Growth of 

German 

commerce 


It is convenient here to carry the topic of Socialism down 
to the Great War. After 1898 the Socialists were much the 
largest political party, gaining heavily in every election. In 
1912 the total vote, 12,188,000, was split among fifteen parties, 
but the Socialists cast 4,239,000 of those votes — or more than 
twice as many as any other party. This was largely, no doubt, 
because the Socialist conventions had put first in their plat¬ 
forms a number of practical political and economic measures 
which the average Englishman or American would not regard 
as dangerous, — such as universal suffrage (including “ votes 
for women”), the initiative and referendum, equal electoral 
districts, payment of members of the Reichstag, and responsi¬ 
bility of the government to the Reichstag. 

3. Equally violent, and more long-continued, was Bismarck’s 
effort to Germanize the Poles of Posen, the Danes of Sleswig, 
and the French of Alsace. To each of these subject peoples, 
Germany forbade the use of its own language. The Sleswig 
Danes were not allowed to teach any history in their schools 
prior to the time when they were seized by Prussia. The Poles 
were tempted by the government to sell their lands to German 
immigrants; and, when instead they sold cheap to their own 
race, the lands were seized by the government (with compen¬ 
sation). But even then the Germans whom the government 
induced to settle in Posen rapidly became Poles in feeling, as 
those induced to settle in Alsace often became French. To 
the end, the delegates in the Reichstag from these three dis¬ 
tricts were always “in opposition” to the government. The 
Prussian system, begotten of force, had confidence only in force 
— and so proved itself unfit for the problems of modern life. 1 

In still another matter, Bismarck’s failure was less blamable. 
The old Germany of his youth had been an agricultural country. 
Foreign trade had been of little consequence. The new com¬ 
mercial Germany that grew up after 1870 he never felt any 

1 There should be no trouble in distinguishing between this policy of 
forceful Germanization of wn willing, conquered subjects, and our Canadian- 
ization, by inducement, of those foreigners who of their own will have sought 
homes in our midst. 















BISMARCK AND COLONIAL EMPIRE 


567 


real sympathy for; but after a short resistance, in 1878, he 
yielded to its demands for high protective tariffs. But the man¬ 
ufacturing interest began early to call also for a colonial em¬ 
pire, outside Europe, as a safe and “sole” market; and this 
demand Bismarck resisted for years. 

But the manufacturers’ 
demand for colonies was 
supported also by a 
people’s demand. After 
1880 the label “Made in 
Germany ” began to be 
seen on all sorts of articles 
in all parts of the world, 
and before 1900 Germany 
had passed all countries 
except England and the 
United States in manu¬ 
factures and trade. Still 
the nation was not con¬ 
tent. Population was 
growing rapidly, and 
many millions had sought 
homes in other lands, 
mainly in- the United 
States and in Argentina 
and Brazil. And so in 
1884, partly to meet the commercial demands of the capitalists, 
and partly to keep future German emigrants under the Ger¬ 
man flag, Bismarck reluctantly adopted the policy of acquiring 
colonies. 

At that time Germany had no possessions outside Europe, and 
no war navy. But, though late in entering the scramble for 
foreign possessions, she made rapid progress, especially after 
the young William II dismissed Bismarck from office in 1890. 
William stood, not for Bismarck’s policy of preserving the great 
existing Germany of that day, but for a new “Pan-German” 
policy of making Germany greater — by means even more un- 



Bismarck, after dismissal from office. —- 
From a photograph. 


The de¬ 
mand for a 
colonial 
empire 


Growth of 
the co¬ 
lonial em¬ 
pire 

And the fall 
of Bis¬ 
marck 








568 


THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1871-1918 




Germany 
the protec¬ 
tor of 
Turkey 


scrupulous than those Bismarck had used — until she should 
be world-mistress. 

Thereafter the colonial empire mounted by leaps. At the 
opening of the World War, Germany had vast possessions in 
Africa, a million square miles in all, mainly on the Guinea coast 
and in South Africa on both east and west coasts (map facing 
p. 603), many valuable groups of islands in the Pacific, and the 
Shantung province of China. 1 None of these acquisitions, how¬ 
ever, interested German ambition so deeply as did one other ad¬ 
vance — into Asia Minor — which began in earnest about 1900. 
Germany did not get absolute title to territory there; but she 
did secure from Turkey various rich concessions, guaranteeing 
her for long periods the sole right to build and operate railroads 
and to develop valuable mining and oil resources. This “ eco¬ 
nomic penetration” she expected confidently to convert into 
full ownership. 

To secure such concessions, Germany sought the Turk’s favor 
in unworthy ways. A growing moral sense in international 
matters made it impossible for England after 1880 to bolster 
longer the dastard Turkish rule over subject Christian peoples; 
but her old place was taken gladly by Germany, which loaned 
to the Sultan skilled officers to reorganize his armies and supplied 
him with the most effective arms against revolt by Christian 
natives (as in the Turkish war with Greece in 1897 over 
Cretan freedom). 

This important change of English and German policy ap¬ 
peared plainly during the horrible “Armenian Massacres” of 
1894-1895. To check a probable move for Armenian inde¬ 
pendence, the Turkish government turned loose upon that un¬ 
happy province — for the first of several times to come — 
hordes of savage soldiery to carry out a policy of frightfulness 
by licensed murder, pillage, and ravishment of a peaceful popu¬ 
lation. At once the English people in monster mass meetings 

1 Two German missionaries were murdered in China in 1897, and the 
Kaiser made that a pretext for this last seizure. A German Socialist paper 
in a satirical cartoon represented him as saying, — “If only my missionaries 
hold out, I may become master of all Asia.” 












COLONIAL EXPANSION 


569 


called upon their government to intervene by arms. But Russia, 
fearful lest her Armenians might be encouraged to rebel, sup¬ 
ported Turkey; France, just then hostile to England in colonial 
matters and bound to Russia as an ally, took the same side; 
and the German emperor chose this moment to send his photo¬ 
graph and that of his wife to the Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey, 
to show his friendly adherence. From his retirement (p. 527) 
the aged Gladstone once more lifted his voice, urging that even 
under these hopeless conditions, England should alone take up 
the work of mercy; but the Tory prime minister, Lord Salis¬ 
bury, confessing regretfully that in 1854 and 1878 “ we put our 
money on the wrong horse,” felt powerless to act. 

This sharp opposition of policy was one reason why Germany 
came to look upon England as the chief foe to her expansion. 
Accordingly Kaiser William determined to make Germany a great 
naval power. He constructed the Kiel Canal, so that the navy 
might have perfect protection, and so that it might instantly 
concentrate in either the North Sea or the Baltic, and year 
by year, against violent Socialist resistance, he forced vast ap¬ 
propriations through the Reichstag to construct more and huger 
superdreadnoughts. 

For Further Reading. — Dawson’s Bismarck and State Socialism 
and Russell’s German Social Democracy are good treatments of their 
subjects. Davis’ Roots of the War is especially good upon the old Ger¬ 
many, pp. 24-38, 162-248. 

Review Exercise. — Make a “brief,” or outline, for the history of 
Germany from the French Revolution to the World War. Do the like 
for France and for England. 


William 
II and his 
navy 





CHAPTER LIX 


Government 


Education 


The 

crushing 

army 

system 


OTHER STATES OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

I. ITALY 

The constitution of Italy is the one given to Sardinia in 1848 
(p. 496). It provides for a limited monarchy with a ministry 
"‘responsible” to the legislature. Until 1882 voting was re¬ 
stricted by a high property qualification to about one man in 
seven, but by 1913, by successive steps, virtual manhood fran¬ 
chise had been established. Local government is patterned 
upon that of France. 

In 1861 Italy had no schools except those taught by religious 
orders, and only 26 per cent of the population (above six years 
of age) could read and write. The next twenty years, through 
the introduction of a fair system of free public schools, increased 
this percentage to 38; and twenty years more, to 44. The 
higher educational institutions are excellent; and in history 
and science Italian scholars hold high rank. 

The kingdom of Italy at its birth was far behind the other 
great states of Europe. Its proper tasks were to provide for 
public education, to repress brigandage, to build railroads, to 
foster useful industries, to drain malarial swamps and reclaim 
abandoned lands, and to develop the abundant water power on 
the east slope of the Apennines so as to furnish electric power 
for manufacturing (particularly necessary since Italy has no 
coal). Progress in all this has been hindered by the poverty of 
the people and by tremendous expenses for military purposes. 
Italy was freed by force of arms, in 1859-1861. The new-born 
state, for many years more, feared that the work might be un¬ 
done by France or Austria; so it adopted the usual European 
military system , with even longer terms of active service than 
were required in Germany or France. 

570 



ITALY 


571 


Taxation is crushing; and yet, much of the time, the govern¬ 
ment can hardly meet expenses. For many years even before 
the World War, a fourth of the revenue went to pay the interest 
on the national debt, and a large part of the rest was for military 
purposes, leaving only a small part for the usual and helpful 
purposes of government. To make ends meet, the government 
was driven to desperate expedients. Salt and tobacco were 
made government monopolies; the state ran a lottery; and 
taxation upon houses, land, and incomes was so exorbitant as 
seriously to hamper industry. 

Economic distress led to political and socialistic agitation. 
The government at first met this by stern repressive legislation. 
Socialists and Republicans were imprisoned by hundreds; and 
for years at a time large parts of Italy were in “state of siege,” 
or under martial law. The Radicals and Socialists, however, 
gained slowly in the parliament; and after 1900 violent repres¬ 
sion was given up. Then at once it appeared, as in France, 
that the Socialists were a true political party; and of late 
years they have been strong even in the ministries. 

A large emigration leaves Italy each year, mainly for Brazil 
and the Argentine Republic. Partly in hope to retain these 
emigrants as Italian citizens, the government took up a policy 
of securing colonies. Indeed the new-born kingdom of Italy 
almost at once began to dream of renewing ancient Italian con¬ 
trol in the Mediterranean. Just across from Sicily lay Tunis, 
one of the rich but anarchic provinces of the decaying Turkish 
Empire. To be ready to seize this plum when ripe, Italy began 
to build a navy, and, at crushing cost, she finally made hers 
among the most powerful in the world. But before she was 
quite ready to act, France stepped in (p. 555). Bitterly cha¬ 
grined, Italy then used her military and naval force to secure 
valuable territory on the coast of Abyssinia (1885), and 
(1912-1913) to seize Tripoli from Turkey. 

Another difficulty about territory long troubled Italy. When 
Austria gave back “Venetia” to Italy in 1867, it was not by 
any means the ancient Venetia in extent. Old Venetia had 
reached down the east coast of the Adriatic, through Dalmatia; 


Taxation 


Agitation 
and politics 


Army, navy, 
and the 
colonial 
empire 


Italia 

Irredenta 





572 


CENTRAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 


State and 
church 


and the modern seaport, Trieste, was still largely Italian in 
blood — though the country district about it was mainly Slav. 
Italy desired the Dalmatian coast, with complete control of 
both sides of the Adriatic. 

In this matter, right and wrong were intermingled, so that a 
just solution of the problem was hardly to be expected. But 
another part of the same trouble was simpler. “Lombardy,” 
redeemed in 1859, certainly should have included the Trentine 
district on the south slope of the Alps, with its purely Italian 
population; but, through the favor of Napoleon III, Aus¬ 
tria retained it. This “ Italia Irredenta” (“Unredeemed”), 
along with unredeemed Trieste, was a constant source of 
danger to European peace down to the World War. 

Italy has also a serious problem in the relations of state and 
church. In 1870, when Italy took possession of Rome, Pope 
Pius IX protested against the act as a deed of brigandage — 
though the citizens of Rome ratified the union by a vote of 
ninety to one. The government left the pope all the dignity of 
an independent sovereign, though his territory was reduced to 
a single palace (the Vatican) and some small estates. Within 
this domain the pope still keeps his own court, maintains his 
own diplomatic service, and carries on the machinery of a state. 
A generous annual income was also set aside for him by the 
government of Italy, but he has never accepted it. 

In common with many zealous Catholics, however, Pope 
Pius IX felt that to exercise his proper influence as head of 
the church, he must be an independent temporal prince in fact 
as well as in form. He refused to recognize the Italian state or 
to have anything to do with it, never left his palace grounds, and 
styled himself the “Prisoner of the Vatican.” His successors 
(1921) have followed this policy, and the Catholic clergy 
have usually approved it. The great majority of the people 
of Italy, however, though almost unanimously Catholic in 
religion, have supported the government’s policy. For a 
long time it seemed possible that, in case of a general Euro¬ 
pean war, Austria might restore the old papal states by a par¬ 
tition of Italy. 






AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


573 


II. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, TO 1914 

Down to the World War, Austria remained “a tangle of races 
and a Babel of tongues.” The peoples spoke eleven distinct 
languages, besides numerous dialects. A fourth of them were 
German (11 millions); a fifth Magyar, or Hungarian (9 millions); 
the rest were Italians, Jews, Illyrians, or Slavs. These Slavs 
made half the population, but they were broken up into many 
sub-races. Only the German language was allowed in the 
schools, the press, or the courts. For a Bohemian to publish a 
paper in his native language was a crime. 

But in her wars of 1859 and 1866, Austria found her subject 
peoples a source of weakness rather than of strength, and saw 
that they rejoiced at her defeats. German Austria at last was 
given a free parliament; but this did not conciliate the powerful 
non-German populations; and finally the two strongest elements 
(German and Hungarian) joined hands to help each other keep 
control over all the others. “Austria-Hungary” became a 
dual monarchy, a federation of two states. Each half of the 
Empire had its own constitution, and the two halves had the 
same monarch and a sort of common legislature. 

These arrangements of 1867 sacrificed the Slavs. The Ger¬ 
mans remained dominant in the Austrian half of the Empire, 
and the Magyars in the Hungarian half. The union of the two 
was not due to any internal ties, but wholly to selfish fears. 
Without Hungarian troops the Austrian Germans and their 
emperor could not any longer hold Bohemia in subjection; 
and without Austria to support her, Hungary would lose her 
border Slav districts and perhaps be herself absorbed in Slav 
Europe. 

Of course such a union was one of unstable equilibrium. 
Bohemia continued to demand, if not independence, at least 
that she be admitted into the imperial federation as an equal 
third state. The Poles of Austria and of Hungary hoped for 
a revival of an independent Poland. The Italians longed to be 
annexed to Italy. The Roumanians of eastern Hungary wished 
to be joined to free Roumania. The Croats and Slovaks desired 


A “ tangle 
of races ” 


German 
supremacy 
to 1866 


Aspirations 
of subject 
peoples 




574 


CENTRAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 


independence or union with Serbia. With the progress of 
humanity and education, toward the twentieth century, it be¬ 
came less possible for the two dominant races to use the old 
cruel methods to keep down the subject peoples. For many 
years, historians had ventured to prophesy that a general Eu¬ 
ropean war, if one came, would probably end this ill-sorted con¬ 
glomerate state. 

III. SPAIN 


Despotism 
from 1815 
to 1833 


“ Govern¬ 
ment by 
revolu¬ 
tion,” 1833- 

1873 


Castelar’s 

presidency 


We have seen that the Holy Alliance restored despotism in 
Spain in 1823 (p. 459). For the next ten years the Liberals 
were persecuted vigorously. To own a foreign book was a 
crime. In 1831 a woman was hanged in Madrid for embroider¬ 
ing on a flag the words, “Law, Liberty, Equality.” 

The cruel and suspicious King Ferdinand died in 1833; but, 
for forty years more, Spain passed from revolution to revolution, 
— none for liberty, each for some ruler or military chieftain — 
with many “paper constitutions.” The government was “gov¬ 
ernment by revolt ” — with surprisingly little bloodshed. It has 
been wittily said that during this period “ revolution in Spain 
became a fine art.” 

For two years (1873-4) the Republicans got control of the gov¬ 
ernment. They elected one of their leaders, Castelar, president, 
but they gave him an unworkable constitution. To save his 
country from bloody anarchy, Castelar after a few months 
turned his vague legal authority into a beneficent dictatorship. 
The choice, he saw, lay between bayonet rule in the hands of dis¬ 
ciplined troops controlled by good men, and pike rule in the 
hands of a vicious rabble led by escaped galley slaves. He 
candidly abandoned his old theories, and with wise energy 
brought order out of chaos. 

It was natural that he should be assailed as a tyrant. When 
the Cortes reassembled, his old friends passed a vote of lack of 
confidence. The commander of the troops asked for permis¬ 
sion to disperse the Cortes; but, by resigning promptly, Caste¬ 
lar showed that he had no wish to prolong his personal authority. 
To-day no one doubts his good faith or good judgment, and the 


SPAIN 


575 


name of this republican statesman-author-dictator stands out 
as the chief glory of Spain in the nineteenth century. 

Castelar’s resignation was followed by anarchy and more 
revolutions; but in 1876 the restoration of the monarchy, 
with the present constitution, introduced Spain to a somewhat 
more hopeful period. The government in theory rests 
mainly in the Cortes. This body consists of a Senate and 
a Congress. Half the senators are elected, while the rest 
are appointed for life. The congressmen are elected by 
manhood suffrage (since 1890). The ministry is expected to 
resign if outvoted in the Cortes, but, in practice, parliamentary 
majorities do not yet really make ministries. Instead, ministries 
make parliamentary majorities, as in England a century and a 
half ago (p. 384); but since 1876 no party has “ called in the 
infantry.” 

Until 1881 the energies of the government went mainly to 
restoring order. Then, for ten years, reform crowded upon re¬ 
form. Jury trial was introduced ; civil marriage was permitted; 
popular education was encouraged; the franchise was extended; 
the slaves in the colonies were freed; and the system of taxation 
was reformed. As a result, trade has mounted by bounds; 
manufactures have developed; railroads and telegraphs have 
been tripled. Population has doubled in the last century, 
rising from ten millions to twenty, and the growth has been es¬ 
pecially rapid in the last decades. Above all, the number of 
peasant land-owners is rapidly increasing. 

Until 1898, the surviving colonial empire (Cuba, the Philip¬ 
pines, and so on) was a drag upon progress. After 1876 a series 
of efforts was made to give good government and some measure 
of self-control to Cuba, which had been in incessant and wasting 
rebellion; but the problem was too difficult to be worked out by 
a country so backward at home. In 1894 Cuba rose again for 
independence. Spain made tremendous efforts to hold her, and 
for some years, at an immense cost, maintained an army of 
200,000 men at a distance of 2000 miles from home. The war¬ 
fare, however, was reducing Cuba to a desert; and finally, in 
1898, the United States interfered. The Spanish-American 


Constitu¬ 
tional mon¬ 
archy, 1876. 
The govern¬ 
ment 


Ten years 
of reform, 
1881-1890 


Loss of 
Cuba 










Poverty and 
taxation 


Religion 

and 

education 


576 CENTRAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 

War resulted in the surrender of all the Spanish colonies, except 
a few neighboring islands and some districts in northwest 
Africa. 

It may be hoped that this loss will prove a gain. The pov¬ 
erty of the government has been serious. The interest charge 
on the huge national debt is a crushing burden, and until 1900 
the debt itself was constantly growing. Now that Spain no 
longer has the task of holding distant colonial possessions, she 
may conclude to reduce her absurd army system and to use the 
money for the development of the intellect of the people and of 
the resources of the land. She still has ambitions, however, 
to extend her colonial possessions in Africa; and she long kept 
a natural hope that, in case of a general European war, she might 
regain Gibraltar. This last consideration went far to make her 
somewhat pro-German in the World War. 

Catholicism is the state religion. Though the constitution 
promises “freedom of worship,” no other religious services are 
permitted in public. In this respect Spain is the most backward 
of European lands. She is also sadly backward in education. 
There is a compulsory education law, but it is a paper edict. 
In 1909 a government investigation found 30,000 towns and 
villages with no public school whatever, while in 10,000 other 
places the schools were in hired premises — many of them 
grossly unfit for the purpose, — connected with slaughter¬ 
houses, cemeteries, or stables. The only schools in most of the 
country, outside these public schools, were “nuns’ schools,” 
teaching only the catechism and needlework. Only one fourth 
of the population could read and write. 

Spanish Liberals have wished to change all this radically, 
(1) by separating church and state, and (2) by excluding clerical 
control from the schools. But the introduction of manhood 
suffrage in 1900 proved disastrous to such reforms. It strength¬ 
ened the Clericals and Conservatives in the Cortes, because of 
the absolute obedience paid at elections by the peasants to 
their priests, and for many years progress in education and in 
politics has almost ceased. 




PLATE XCIII 



Gibraltar, seen from the Spanish shore. The cliff is lined with concealed batteries. 



































PLATE XCIV 



Palais de Justice, Bbussels, Belgium. 
























BELGIUM 


577 


IV. THE REPUBLIC OF PORTUGAL 

In 1821, as one of the results of the Spanish revolution of 
1820, the king of Portugal accepted a constitution. For many 
years, however, the country was distracted by revolutions, and 
by wars between claimants for the crown; but in 1910 a sudden 
uprising set up a republic, which so far (1921) seems stable. 
British influence controls foreign relations, so that Portugal is, 
in practice, almost a protectorate. 

Until 1910 Catholicism was the state religion. Indeed there 
were only a few hundred people of other faiths in the country. 
But the Republican government at once established complete 
religious freedom, confiscated the church property, and adopted 
a plan for the “separation of church and state” like that set up 
in France in 1906. Education, by law, is universal and gratui¬ 
tous ; but in practice the children of the poor do not attend 
school. The schools, too, are very poor. Portugal is more illit¬ 
erate even than Spain. 

Colonies are still extensive (in the Verde islands, in Africa, 
and in India), but they do not pay expenses, and it is doubtful 
whether so poor a country can afford to keep them. Their ad¬ 
ministration is very bad. 

For thirty years the national finances have been on the verge 
of bankruptcy. 


V. BELGIUM 

The constitution of Belgium is still that of 1831, with a few 
amendments. The king acts only through “responsible” 
ministers. In 1831 the franchise rested upon the payment of a 
high tax ; and even in the ’eighties only one man in ten could vote. 
Agitation began for further extension of the franchise; but the 
parliament voted down bill after bill. Finally, in 1893 the 
Labor party declared a general strike, in order to exert political 
pressure, and the crowds of unemployed men in Brussels about 
the parliament house threatened serious riots. The militia, 
too, showed a disposition to side with the rioters. The members 
of parliament, looking on from the windows, changed their 


Establish¬ 
ment of the 
Republic 


Religion 

and 

education 


Present 

problems 


A demo¬ 
cratic 
franchise 







Cooperation 
and the 
high schools 


578 CENTRAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 

minds, and quickly passed a new franchise law, providing for 
manhood suffrage, with plural votes (one or two extra votes ) for 
wealth and education. In 1919 (after the World War) plural 
votes were abolished. The leading political parties are the 
Clericals, the Liberals, and the Socialists. 

For many years Belgium ranked among the leading industrial 
nations. In 1910 the population was seven and a half millions 
— more than double that in 1815. The people were happy, 
progressive, and prosperous. Then for more than four years 
(1914-1918) this little land was ravaged by the World War. 

VI. DENMARK 

The king of Denmark granted a paper constitution in 1848; 
but real constitutional government began only after the defeat 
of 1864. Two years of democratic agitation then secured the 
constitution of 1866. This document promises freedom of 
speech and of the press, and creates a Diet (Rigsdag) of two 
Houses. The Landthing, or upper House, is composed partly 
of members appointed by the king, partly members elected on 
a very high property basis. The Folkthing, or lower House, 
is elected. In 1901 the vote was given to all self-supporting 
men, thirty years of age, and in 1915 it was extended to all men 
and most women. In 1901, after a thirty years’ contest, min¬ 
istries were made responsible to the Representatives. 

Denmark is the special home of cooperation among farmers. 
The land is not naturally fertile. The people, until after the 
middle of the nineteenth century, were poor and ignorant. 
Agriculture was backward, and the defeat by Prussia and Aus¬ 
tria in 1864 left the little state impoverished. Its people were 
forced to seek some escape from their condition. 

A new system of schools pointed the way. Denmark con¬ 
tains 15,000 square miles with nearly three millions of people. 
That is, it has more people than Ontario, in one-seventeenth the 
territory. More than a third of these people are farmers. For 
them, ninety-eight high schools give instruction in agriculture 
and domestic economy, — twenty of the ninety-eight being 
special schools in agriculture. Most of these schools, too, give 







SCANDINAVIA 


579 


special “short courses” in the winter, and these are largely at¬ 
tended by adult farmers and their wives. The schools are not 
merely industrial; even the short courses emphasize music and 
literature. They aim to teach not merely how to get a living, 
but also how to live nobly. And they have taught the Danish 
farmers the methods of successful cooperation. 

Local cooperative societies are found in almost every dis¬ 
tinct line of farm industry, — in dairying, in the hog industry, 
in marketing eggs, in breeding cattle, in producing improved 
seed, in securing farm machinery, in farms loans. The local 
societies are federated into national organizations. The central 
society that markets eggs and dairy products has an office in 
London as well as in Copenhagen, and owns its own swift 
steamers to ply daily between the two capitals. 

Thanks to the cooperative system, the profits go to the pro¬ 
ducers, not to middlemen. Best of all, the Danish peasant, on 
eight or ten acres of land, is an educated man, cultured because 
of his intelligent, scientific mastery of his work. 

In 1914, Denmark was one of the most prosperous farming 
countries in the world. But the World War ruined its two 
chief markets, England and Germany; and now (1923) for several 
years that little neutral land — industrious, frugal, intelligent — 
has suffered dire economic distress, through no fault of its own. 
This is one of the striking evidences of the close interdepend¬ 
ence of the different parts of our modern world. < 

VII. NORWAY AND SWEDEN 

The Congress of Vienna, in 1814, took Norway from Den¬ 
mark and gave it to Sweden (p. 450), to reward that country 
for services against Napoleon. But the Norwegian people 
declined to be bartered from one ruler to another. A Diet or 
Storthing, assembled at Eidvold, declared Norway a sovereign 
state, and adopted a liberal constitution ( May 17, 181 f). Swe¬ 
den, backed by the Powers, made ready to enforce its claims, but 
finally a compromise was arranged. The Diet elected the Swed¬ 
ish king as king of Norway also on condition that he should rec¬ 
ognize the new Norwegian constitution. That document made 


The 

“ union” 
1814 








Norway’s 
struggle for 
self-govern¬ 
ment 


Storthing 
and royal 
vetoes 



580 CENTRAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 

the sittings of the Storthing wholly independent of the king's 
will, and also provided that the royal veto should have no effect 
upon a bill passed in three successive sessions. 


A Norwegian Fjord, — Sogndal. 

The union lasted almost a century, but there was a growing 
chasm between the two lands. Sweden had a strong aristocracy 
and a considerable city population. Norway even then had 
only a weak aristocracy, and was a land of independent peasants 
and sturdy fisherfolk and sailors. In the early part of the cen¬ 
tury the Storthing succeeded in abolishing nobility in Norway, 
after two vetoes by the king, and in 1884 it established manhood 
suffrage against his will. Meantime there had begun agita¬ 
tion for a greater amount of self-government. 

In 1872-1874 the Storthing passed a bill three times, re¬ 
quiring the ministries to resign if outvoted. King Oscar II de¬ 
clared that this was an amendment to the constitution. In 
such a case, he urged, the rule limiting his veto could not apply, 
and he declined to recognize the law. Civil war seemed at hand; 
but a new election in 1884 showed that the Norwegians were 
almost unanimous in the demand, and the king yielded, (Oscar 






SCANDINAVIA 


581 


II came to the Swedish throne in 1872, and his moderation and 
fairness had much to do on other occasions also with preventing 
an armed conflict, which impetuous men on either side were 
ready to precipitate. He was one of the greatest men who sat 
upon European thrones in the last century.) 

This victory made the real executive in Norway Norwegian, 
for all internal affairs. The Storthing passed at once to a de¬ 
mand for power to appoint Norwegian consuls. But the con¬ 
stitution had left the regulation of foreign affairs in the king’s 
hands ; and the Swedish party exclaimed with some reason that 
the proposed arrangement would ruin the slight union that re¬ 
mained between the two countries, and that it was unconstitu¬ 
tional. Again King Oscar insisted that on such .a matter his 
veto could not be overridden. Finally in 1905, after twenty 
years of strenuous struggle, the Storthing by almost unani¬ 
mous vote declared the union with Sweden dissolved. The 
aristocratic element in Sweden called for war; but King Oscar 
was nobly resolute that the two peoples should not imbrue 
their hands in each other’s blood. The Swedish labor unions, 
too, threatened a universal strike, to prevent violent coercion 
of their Norwegian brethren. In July the Norwegians declared 
in favor of independence in a great national referendum, by 
a vote of 368,000 to 184. Sweden bowed to the decision. In 
September, 1905, to the eternal honor of both peoples,, a peaceful sep¬ 
aration was arranged upon friendly terms; and then independent 
Norway chose a Danish prince (Haakon VII) for king. 

In 1901 the Storthing gave the franchise in all municipal 
matters to women who paid (or whose husbands paid) a small 
tax. In 1907 the parliamentary franchise was given to the 
same class of women. Thus, Norway was the first sovereign 
nation to give the franchise to women. 

Until late in the nineteenth century Sweden was backward 
in politics. The Diet was made up, medieval fashion, of four 
estates — nobles, clergy, burgesses, and peasants —• and the 
king could always play off one class against another. In 1866 
this arrangement was replaced by a modern parliament of two 


Norway 
leads in 
woman 
suffrage 


Swedish 
reform 
since 1866 




582 


CENTRAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 


Condition 
in 1830 


The Sonder- 
bund War 


Houses, but for nearly half a century more the franchise ex¬ 
cluded a large part of the adult males. Agitation for reform 
began vehemently in 1895. Seventeen years later, the right to 
vote for members of the lower House of the parliament was 
given to all adult men, but with “plural” votes for wealth. At 
the same time women secured the franchise for all matters of 
local government. Then in 1919, sweeping reforms abolished 
plural voting and established simple universal suffrage for men 
and women in both national and local affairs. 

VIII. THE SWISS REPUBLIC 

The Congress of Vienna left the Swiss cantons in a loose con¬ 
federacy, (p. 452), not unlike that of the United States before 
1789. 

The first great change grew out of religious strife. The rich 
city cantons were Protestant, and after 1830 they became pro¬ 
gressive in politics. The old democratic cantons were Catholic, 
and were coming to be controlled by a new conservative Clerical 
party. The confederacy seemed ready to split in twain. The 
final struggle began in Aargau. In this canton, in the election 
of 1840, the Progressives won. The Clericals rose in revolt. To 
punish them, after suppressing the rising, the Progressives dis¬ 
solved the eight monasteries of the canton. This act was con¬ 
trary to the constitution of the Union; and the seven Catholic 
cantons in alarm formed a separate league, — the Sonderbund, 
— and declared that they would protect the Clericals in their 
rights in any canton where they might be attacked. 

The Federal Diet, now controlled by the Progressives, ordered 
the Sonderbund to dissolve; and in 1847 “The Sonderbund 
War” was begun — seven cantons against fifteen. The des¬ 
potic Powers of the Holy Alliance were preparing to'interfere 
in behalf of the Sonderbund, but the Unionists (warned and en¬ 
couraged by the English government) acted with remarkable 
celerity and crushed the Secessionists in a three weeks’ cam¬ 
paign. 1 Metternich still intended to interfere, but the revolu- 

1 There are interesting points of likeness between the civil war in Switzer¬ 
land and that a little later in the United States. In both countries there 


PLATE XCV 



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SWITZERLAND 


583 


tions of 1848 rendered him harmless. Then the Progressives 
remodeled the constitutions of the conquered cantons, so as to 
put power into the hands of the Progressives there, and adopted 
a new national constitution, which made the union a true Federal 
Republic. 

The Federal Assembly (national legislature) has two Houses, 
— the Council of the States and the National Council. The first 
consists of two delegates from each canton, chosen by the can¬ 
tonal legislature. The second House represents the people of the 
union , the members being elected in single districts, like our 
federal M.P.’s. The franchise is given to all adult males, 
and elections take place on Sundays, so that all may vote. 
The Federal Executive is not a single president, but a commit¬ 
tee of seven (The Federal Council ), chosen by the Federal Assem¬ 
bly. 

Each canton, like each of our provinces, has its own constitution 
and government. In a few cantons the old folkmoot, or primary 
Assembly, is still preserved ; in the others the legislature consists 
of one chamber, chosen by manhood suffrage. In each there 
is an executive council, not a single governor. 

As a rule, even in modern democratic countries, the people 
govern themselves only indirectly. They choose representa¬ 
tives (legislatures and governors), and these “delegated” in¬ 
dividuals attend directly to matters of government. Switzer¬ 
land, however, has shown that “direct democracy” can work 
under certain conditions. The two Swiss devices for this end 
are known as the referendum and the popular initiative. 

The referendum consists merely in referring laws that have 
been passed by the legislature to a popular vote. This practice 
really originated in America. The State of Massachusetts sub¬ 
mitted its first constitution to a popular vote in 1778 and in 
1780. The French Revolutionists adopted the practice for 

was a conflict between a national and a states sovereignty party. In both, 
as a result of war, the more progressive part of the nation forced a stronger 
union upon the more backward portion. In both, too, the states which 
tried to secede did so in behalf of rights guaranteed them in the old consti¬ 
tution, which they believed to be endangered by their opponents. 


The Consti¬ 
tution 


Direct 

legislation 


The 

referendum 





584 


CENTRAL EUROPE, 1871-1914 


The 

initiative 


Place in 
history 


their constitutions, and the plebiscites of the Napoleons extended 
the principle to some other questions besides constitutions. In 
America, after 1820, nearly all the States used the referendum 
on the adoption of new constitutions and of constitutional 
amendments. 

But Switzerland taught the world how to go farther than 
this. By the constitution of 1848, all constitutional amend¬ 
ments, cantonal or national, must be submitted to popular vote, 
and in some cantons this compulsory referendum is extended 
to all laws ; while, by an amendment of 1874, a certain number 
of voters by petition may require the submission of any national 
law. (This “ optional ” referendum has been in use in the sep¬ 
arate cantons for most of the nineteenth century.) 

The popular initiative is a Swiss development. It consists 
in the right of a certain number of voters, by petition, to frame 
a new bill and to compel its submission to the people. A little 
before 1848, this device began to be regarded as the natural com¬ 
plement of the referendum. By 1870, in nearly all the cantons 
a small number of voters could introduce any law they desired. 

In 1891, by amendment, this liberal principle was adopted for 
the national government: a petition of fifty thousand voters may 
frame a law , which must then be submitted to a national vote. 

Thus the people, without the intervention of the legislature, 
can frame bills by the initiative, and pass on them by the ref¬ 
erendum. These devices for direct legislation are the most im¬ 
portant advances made in late years by democracy. (Recently, ! j 
many of the more progressive States of the American Union 
have carried them, with the further device of the recall, to a 
higher degree of perfection even than in their Swiss home.) 

In other respects also Switzerland has made amazing advances 
and to-day it is one of the most progressive countries in the 
world. The schools are among the best in Europe: no other 
country has so little illiteracy. Comfort is well diffused. The 
army system is a universal militia service, lighter than has 
been known anywhere else in continental Europe during the 
last forty years. Two thirds of the people are German; but 





SWITZERLAND 


585 


French and Italian, as well as German, are “official” languages, 
and the debates in the Federal Assembly are carried on in all 
three tongues. The universal patriotism of the people is a 
high testimonial to the strength of free institutions and of the 
flexible federal principle, in binding together diverse elements. 
Said President Lowell, of Harvard, a few years ago, “ The Swiss 
Confederation, on the whole, is the most successful democracy 
in the world. ” 





CHAPTER LX 


RUSSIA 


Growth of 
territory 


The Trans- 

Siberian 

Railway 


The danger 
to India 


Russia’s destruction of Napoleon’s Grand Army, in 1813, 
revealed her tremendous power. In the fifteenth century (p. 
395), the Russians held only a part of what is now South Central 
Russia, nowhere touching a navigable sea. Expansion, since 
then, has come partly by colonization, partly by war (pp. 395, 
396, 402). 

In Asia, Russian advance after 1800 was steady and terrify¬ 
ing. She aimed at ice-free Pacific ports on the east, and at the 
Persian Gulf and the Indian seas on the south, besides the rich 
realms of Central Asia and India. In 1858 she reached the 
Amur, seizing northern Manchuria from China. Two years 
later she secured Vladivostok — ice-free for most of the year. 
In 1895 the Trans-Siberian Railway was begun, and in 1902 
that vast undertaking was completed to Vladivostok. This 
road is more than 5000 miles long,— nearly double the length 
of the great American transcontinental roads. Eventually 
it must prove one of the great steps in the advance of civiliza¬ 
tion ; and it has been fitly compared in importance to the find¬ 
ing of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope or the build¬ 
ing of the Suez or Panama canals. Meanwhile Russia had 
compelled China to cede the magnificent harbor of Port Arthur 
(p. 608) and the right to extend the Trans-Siberian Railroad 
through Chinese Manchuria to that port (1898). 

On the south, just after the opening of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, Russia secured the passes of the Caucasus. By the 
middle of the century she had advanced into Turkestan. From 
that lofty vantage ground she planned a further advance, 
and by 1895 she extended a great Trans-Caspian railway 
to within seventy-five miles of Herat, the “key to India.” 

586 




OPPRESSION AND CONSPIRACY 


587 


Great Britain seemed ready to resist further advance by war; 
but a clash in Central Asia was postponed, by Japan’s victory 
in the extreme East. 

In the last years of the nineteenth century Russia was busied 
with vast internal improvements, -— not only the great railroads 
mentioned above, from Moscow to the Pacific and to the fron¬ 
tiers of India, but also a stupendous system of canals to connect 
her internal waterways. Under such conditions at home, 
Russia had every reason to desire peace abroad; but in 
1904 the arrogant folly of her military classes plunged her 
into a war with Japan as unjust as it proved ruinous. To the 
amazement of the world, Russia’s huge power collapsed utterly 
on land and sea, and she was thrust back from Port Arthur and 
Manchuria (pp. 605-611). Russia still covered eight and a 
half million square miles (between two and three times the 
area of the United States), or about one seventh the area of 
the habitable earth; and she had a population of one hundred 
and sixty millions — just about equal in number to the whole 
group of English-speaking peoples. 

At the end of the Napoleonic wars, many young Russian 
officers came back to their homes full of the ideals of the French 
revolution. The Tsar himself (Alexander I, 1801-1825) had 
been educated by a liberal French tutor; and for a time, in a 
weak, sentimental, indecisive way, he favored a liberal policy, 
and introduced a few reforms. Metternich Won him from these 
tendencies; and then many educated and liberal Russians be¬ 
gan to be conspirators against Tsarism. 

The cause of the conspirators was long hopeless, because it 
had no interest for the masses. Nowhere else in the world was 
the gap so complete between upper and lower classes. Four 
fifths the population of European Russia were serfs, filthy, 
ignorant, degraded, living in a world wholly apart from that of 
the small class of educated Russians. 

Besides the serfs, the rural population comprised a numerous 
nobility, who were landed proprietors; and in the cities there 
were small professional and mercantile classes. For twohun- 


Checked by 
Japan 


Extent in 
1910 


Revolution¬ 
ary move¬ 
ment? 


The serfs 


And society 





588 


RUSSIA, 1815-1914 


Beginning 
of the 
Slavophil 
movement 


Reforms of 
Alexander II 


Emancipa¬ 
tion of the 
serfs 


dred years (since Peter the Great) these upper classes had had 
at least a veneer of Western civilization. At the opening of 
the nineteenth century their conversation was carried on, not 
in Russian, but in French; and their books, fashions, and 
largely their ideas, were imported from Paris. 

The revolutionary conspirators from these upper classes 
were romantic dreamers. In December of 1825, the revolu¬ 
tionists attempted a rising. They met with no popular sup¬ 
port, and the new Tsar Nicholas (1825-1855) exterminated 
almost the entire group with brutal executions, often under the 
knout. This cruelty, however, made “the Decembrists” mar¬ 
tyrs to the next generation of generous-minded Russian youth; 
and their ideas lived on in the great Russian writers of the middle 
of the century, like Gogol and Turgeniev. 

The reign of Nicholas I was marked also by the beginning of 
Slavophilism. This was a movement among the educated 
classes to establish a native Russian culture, in contrast to the 
imported Western veneer. The Russians had begun to believe 
in themselves as the future leaders of a new civilization. They 
looked forward to a vast Pan-Slav empire (to include Bohemia 
and the Slav states of the Balkans) which should surpass West¬ 
ern Europe both in power and in the character of its culture. 
Nicholas gave his support heartily to the Slavophils, in large 
part because he despised the Western ideas as to liberty and 
constitutional government. 

In the closing years of Nicholas, however, the humiliation of 
the Crimean War (p. 495) revealed the despotic bureaucratic 
system as weak, when pitted against Western Europe; and 
this helped the Russian liberals to win to their side the new 
Tsar, Alexander II (1855-1881). Alexander struck the shackles 
from the press and the universities, sought to secure just treat¬ 
ment for the Jews, introduced jury trial, established a system 
of graded representative assemblies in the provinces (the 
zemstvos), and, in 1861, against the almost unanimous opposi¬ 
tion of the nobles, emancipated the fifty million serfs. 

Not only were the serfs freed from the jurisdiction of the 
nobles and from obligation to serve them : they were also given 









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THE SERFS “EMANCIPATED” 


589 


land. This of course was necessary if the peasants were to live 
at all. The land, like the serf, was taken from the noble ; but 
not by confiscation, and not enough of it. Each village com¬ 
munity (mir) was to pay for its land. The Tsar paid the noble 
landlord down; and the mir was to repay the Tsar in small in¬ 
stallments spread over forty-nine years. Alexander and his 
liberal friends intended each village to receive at least as much 
land as the villagers had had for their support while serfs; but 
the noble officials, who carried out the details, managed to cut 
down the amount of land and to make the price unduly high. 
The peasants found themselves at once forced to eke out their 
scanty income by tilling the land of the neighboring landlord — 
on his terms. The annual “redemption payments” to the gov¬ 
ernment, too, were excessive. More than half the peasant’s 
labor went to satisfy the tax-collector. By 1890, one third the 
peasant body had pledged their labor one or more years in ad¬ 
vance to the noble landlords — and so had been forced back 
into a new serfdom. The peasants remained ignorant and 
wretched, with a death-rate double that of Western Eu¬ 
rope. As late as 1900, half their children died under the age 
of five; and every now and then large districts were devastated 
by famine — while vast tracts of fertile land lay uncultivated. 

At the emancipation, the peasants refused to believe 
that the Tsar meant to give them such small allotments; and 
in countless places they rose in bloody riots against the nobility 
and the Tsar’s officers. The reactionary parts of society urged 
upon Alexander that such risings were the product of the pro¬ 
gressive writers and newspapers he had encouraged. As early 
as 1862 the Tsar was won to this view, and began to 
suppress the liberal press. Writers who had thought them¬ 
selves within the circle of his friendship were imprisoned in 
secret dungeons or sent to hard labor in Siberian mines, — with¬ 
out trial, merely by decree, — and the brutal police sought to 
crush out all liberalism by barbarous cruelty. 

The liberals, in the ’sixties, had come to include the great 
body of university students. These youths, — men and women 


And the 

land 

problem 


The peas¬ 
ants re en¬ 
slaved 


Alexander’s 

vacillating 

policy 


Persecution 
of liberals 


The 

Nihilists 








590 


RUSSIA, 1815-1914 


Reaction in¬ 
tensified un¬ 
der Alexan¬ 
der III and 
Nicholas II 


Religious 

persecution 


of good family, — ardent for the regeneration of their country, 
now organized societies to spread information about the peas¬ 
ants’ misery among the upper classes, and socialistic ideas 
among the peasants, and in the later 'seventies one branch of 
these persecuted radicals decided to meet violence with vio¬ 
lence. Their secret organization was popularly known as the 
Nihilist society. They deliberately resolved to sacrifice their 
own lives to the cause of liberty, and by assassination after 
assassination they sought to avenge the barbarous persecution 
of their friends and to terrify the Tsar into granting representa¬ 
tive government. Alexander at last decided to grant part of 
their demands. He prepared a draft of a constitution which was 
to set up a National Assembly. But the day before this plan 
was to be announced the Nihilists dynamited him. 

Alexander III (1881-1894) returned to the reactionary policy 
of his grandfather Nicholas. What remained of Alexander II’s 
reforms was undone — except that serfdom could not well be 
restored in law. The press was subjected to a sterner censor¬ 
ship. University teachers were muzzled, being forbidden to 
touch upon matters of government in their lectures. Books 
like Green’s English People were added to the long list of stand¬ 
ard works whose circulation was forbidden. The royal police 
were given despotic authority to interfere in the affairs of the 
mirs. 

All this reactionary policy was continued by the next — 
and the last — of the Tsars, the incompetent Nicholas II (1894- 
1917), and with it was coupled an increase in the despotic at¬ 
tempt to Russianize the border provinces. The Finnish and 
German Lutherans of the Baltic regions, the Polish Catholics, 
the Armenian dissenters, the Georgians, and the Jews were all 
cruelly persecuted. Children were taken from parents to be 
educated in the Greek faith; native languages were forbidden 
in schools, churches, newspapers, legal proceedings, or on sign 
boards; and against the Jews (who had already been cruelly 
crowded into “the Jewish Pale”) bloody “pogroms” were 
organized hy police officers with every form of outrage, plunder, 
torture, and massacre. (It was this persecution that drove 


NIHILISTS AND SOCIALISTS 


591 


great numbers of Russian Jews to America.) And, in return 
for the Tsar’s aid against heresy, the Russian priests became 
spies for the autocracy in its political persecution, and betrayed 
to the police the secrets of the confessional. 

In one respect the Baltic districts had more cause for com¬ 
plaint even than the Jews. Finland, the old German provinces 
(Livonia, Esthonia, Courland), and Poland all excelled Russia 
proper in civilization, and each of them , at its acquisition hy 
Russia , had been solemnly promised the perpetual enjoyment 
of its own language , religion, and laws. Russianization may 
sometimes have been a not unmixed evil to barbarous regions 
on the east; but it was bitterly hard upon these progressive 
western districts. 

By 1890, the police seemed to have crushed all reform agita¬ 
tion and all open criticism of the government. But there was 
an “Underground Russia” where modern ideas were working 
silently. Many liberals were growing up among the increasing 
class of lawyers, physicians, professors, and merchants, and, 
sometimes, among the nobles. 

More important still was the fact that, about 1890, even 
Russia began to be touched by the industrial revolution. Mos¬ 
cow had been a “sacred city” of churches, marked by spires 
and minarets. In 1890, it was becoming an industrial center, 
with huge factories and furnaces, marked by smoke-hung chim¬ 
neys. 

In such cities Socialism made converts rapidly among the 
new working class. There were two distinct bodies of these 
Russian Socialists. The larger body looked forward only to 
peaceful reform, like the Social Democratic party in other 
lands. The other was made up of Social-Revolutionists. 
This was a secret society, perfectly organized, which had 
absorbed the old Nihilists. It held that violence was necessary 
and right in the struggle to free Russia from the despotism which 
choked all attempts at peaceful reform. In this day of per¬ 
fectly disciplined standing armies, with modern guns, open 
revolution is doomed to almost certain extinction in blood. 
So the Revolutionists worked by the dagger and the dynamite 


Russian 
church aids 
despotism 


Russianiza- 
tion of the 
Baltic region 


Under¬ 

ground 

Russia 


The indus¬ 
trial revo¬ 
lution 


And Social¬ 
ism 










592 


RUSSIA, 1815-1914 


The liberal 
movement 
of 1906: 

“ the First 
Russian 
Revolution ’ 


Class 
divisions 
among the 
liberals 


bomb, to slay the chief ministers of despotism. The society 
selected its intended victims with careful deliberation; and, 
when one had been killed, it posted placards proclaiming 
to the world the list of “crimes” for which he had been “exe¬ 
cuted.” Spite of every precaution, the Revolutionists, with 
complete disregard of their own lives, managed to strike down 
minister after minister among the most hated of the Tsar’s tools. 

The opportunity of the reform forces seemed to have come 
in 1905. The failure of Russia in the Japanese war showed 
that the despotic government had been both inefficient and 
corrupt. High officials had stolen money which should have 
gone for rifles and powder and food and clothing for the armies. 
During the disasters of the war itself, other officials stole the 
Red Cross funds intended to relieve the suffering of the wounded. 
The intelligent classes were exasperated by these shames and 
by the humiliating defeat of their country, and began to make 
their murmurs heard. The peasantry were woefully oppressed 
by war-taxes. The labor classes in the towns were thrown out 
of employment in the general stagnation of business. The 
agitation for reform among all these elements became turbulent; 
and in March, after failing to stifle it in blood, in the massacre 
of Red Sunday, the Tsar promised a Duma (representative 
assembly). 

As after the Emancipation Edict forty-five years before, the 
Russian people went wild with joy and hope; and again bitter 
disappointment followed. All Russia had seemed united 
against autocracy in demands for political reform; but now it 
proved to be divided within itself by a bitter class conflict. 
The city proletariat was struggling for radical economic change 
as well as for political reform; especially for shorter hours and 
higher wages, for which many strikes were then in progress. 
The middle-class liberals (including most employers of labor) 
hoped that representative government — with only the grant 
of more land to the peasants — would remedy Russia’s ills. 
Immediately after issuing the October decree for the Duma, 
the Tsar threw himself once more into the arms of the reac¬ 
tionary official party, and sought to take advantage of this class 




THE DUMA OF 1906 


593 


division among the liberals. The prisons were emptied of crim¬ 
inals, who were then organized by the police as “patriots”— 
better known in history as the Black Hundreds; and within 
three weeks, in a hundred different places, some 4000 radicals 
and labor leaders were assassinated. 

This brutal violence gave increased standing among the people 
to the radical Socialist movement. In all great cities there had 
been organized a Council of Workmen’s Deputies to guide 
the strikes. These Councils now began to be mighty political 
forces. The peasants, too, organized Councils of Deputies in 
many districts, and, in some places, revolutionarily inclined 
regiments made common cause with peasants and workingmen, 
and elected Councils of Soldiers’ Deputies. This was the birth 
of the famous soviets — a desperate attempt to meet the Tsar’s 
duplicity and brutality by a new working-class government. 

But these soviet organizations at once began to antagonize 
the liberal capitalists by ill-timed demands as to hours and 
wages, enforced by general strikes. Accordingly the middle 
classes held aloof, while the Tsar’s government used all its re¬ 
maining strength in the early winter to crush the new soviets 
with an indescribably horrible vengeance. 

In April of 1906, midst gloom and anarchy, with 75,000 of 
Russia’s finest men and women suffering torment in dungeons 
as political prisoners, and with a cruel famine desolating many 
provinces, the Duma was at last brought together — the first rep¬ 
resentative assembly of the Russian nation. The Tsar had ar¬ 
ranged the elections so as to leave most weight in the hands of 
the wealthy and noble classes, and the police interfered actively 
against radical candidates; but the revolutionary movement 
had swept everything before it. The largest party among the 
members were middle-class liberals, who called themselves 
Constitutional Democrats. The chief leader of this group was 
Miliukof, and it contained many other men of wise and 
moderate statesmanship. Next in numbers came the Peasants, 
with a program of moderate Socialism. The extreme Socialists 
of the towns ( Social Democrats), had in great measure refused 
to take part in the elections. Still they counted 25 members. 


Reaction at 
court 


The origin 
of soviets 


Crushed for 
the time by 
the Tsar 


The Duma 
of 1906 



594 


RUSSIA, 1815-1914 


Anarchy and 
violence 


The Duma 
of 1907 


Of the total of 400, only 28 were avowed supporters of autoc¬ 
racy. The Tsar’s repudiation by the nation was complete. 

The Duma, after vainly seeking a “responsible” ministry 
and the abolition of martial law, wisely concentrated its efforts 
upon securing the state lands for the suffering peasants. The 
Tsar, now in the hands of intensely reactionary advisers, was 
“sadly disappointed” that the Duma insisted on meddling in 
such matters, and (July 21) he dissolved it. Months of an¬ 
archy followed. The government fell back upon stern repres¬ 
sion and intimidation, to suppress not only disorder, but also 
political agitation. More than a thousand political offenders 
were executed, and fifty thousand were sent to Siberia or to 
prison, while the Revolutionists counted up 24,239 others slain 
by the soldiery in putting down or punishing riots. Prisoners 
were tortured mercilessly, and in many cases were flogged to 
death. 

A second Duma met March 5, 1907. The surviving liberal 
members of the former assembly had been made ineligible 
for election. But this time the Social Democrats went into 
the campaign in earnest and elected nearly one third the mem¬ 
bers, in spite of desperate efforts of the police to close their 
meetings and imprison their leaders. With the remnants 
of the Constitutional Democrats and the Peasants, there 
was once more a large majority opposed to the government. 
In June the Tsar demanded that some sixty Socialist members 
should be expelled as “traitors”; and when the Duma ap¬ 
pointed a committee to investigate, he dissolved it. Then by 
arbitrary decree he changed the method of electing Dumas so 
as to put control into the hands of the great landlords. A 
third and a fourth Duma (1907, 1912), chosen upon this 
basis, proved properly submissive. The revolution, men said, 
had been stifled. 


PAET XV - THE WOELD IN 1914 


CHAPTER LXI 

SCIENCE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

In spite of certain remaining dark spots on the globe, like 
Russia, it was usual in 1900 to speak of the preceding hun¬ 
dred years as “the wonderful century.” It is true that no 
thousand years before had seen so much progress. Theodore 
Roosevelt’s day was farther removed from Napoleon’s than his 
from Charlemagne’s. And in this mighty transformation the 
chief agents had been scientific invention and humane sentiment. 

PROGRESS IN SCIENCE 

Very wonderful was the scientific advance. The close of the 
eighteenth century saw those inventions in England that created 
the age of iron and substituted steam and machinery for hand 
power in production, so creating the “Industrial Revolution” 
(pp. 465 ff.). Toward the middle of the next century came a 
second burst of scientific invention, in which America led, 
again revolutionizing daily life and in particular applying 
machinery to farm production. Then, towards the close of 
that same century came the third group of inventions, re¬ 
placing the age of steam by the age of electricity , transforming 
once more the face of the world and the daily habits of vast 
populations. Gasoline engines and electric engines furnished 
new power for locomotion, for factory, and for field. Man 
explored the sea bottom in submarines and conquered the 
air. The electric street railway, the automobile, and auto 
trucks made for cleaner city streets, better country roads, and 
a vast saving of time and labor. Electric lights helped to 

595 












596 


THE WORLD IN 1914 



banish crime along with darkness. Telephone, phonograph, 
wireless telegraphy gave men new power to do and to enjoy. 
And along with this went such a transformation of all earlier 
machinery and processes as made those of 1850 quaint curi¬ 
osities. 

More important than these inventions that affect our bodies 
and our outer life have been the change in ideas about the 


Forging a Railway Car Axle To-day, at the Howard Axle Works, Home¬ 
stead, Pr. The drop-hammer, about to strike the white-hot axle, weighs 
three and one half tons. Fourteen such hammers are used in these works. 

world and man’s relation to it, — a change due also to the 
new science. 

A new In 1833 Sir Charles Lyell published his Principles of Geology. 

geology Men had believed that the earth was essentially the globe as 

it came from the hand of God, five or six thousand years 
before, modified perhaps in places by tremendous convulsions 
or floods. Lyell explained mountains, plains, valleys, the rock 
strata, and other geologic features, as the results of the slow 
action of water, frost, snow, and other forces which we see still 





PLATE XCVII 




Above.—-The “De Witt Clinton,” the first steam railroad train in 
America. The first trip (from Albany to Schenectady) was made August 
9, 1831, with a maximum speed of 15 miles an hour. Note the resem¬ 
blance of the “coaches” to horse vehicles. 

Below. — A Modern Electric Locomotive on the Chicago, Milwau¬ 
kee, and St. Paul Road. Forty-two such engines are in use to haul pas¬ 
sengers and freight over the great Continental Divide. This engine 
weighs 282 tons, has an electrification of 3000 volts, and can haul six and 
a half million pounds of freight up a stiff grade at 16 miles an hour, or, 
geared for high speed, can pull a passenger train, like the one here pictured, 
at a mile a minute on ordinary levels. 










PLATE XCVIII 



Copy cy hi by underwood & Underwood 



Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 
Two Views of the Panama Canal. 


Above. — The Miraflores Locks, with the S.S. Santa Clara leaving the 
upper west chamber under tow of an electric motor, not in sight in the 
picture. 

Below. — The first boat through after navigation had been temporarily 
blocked (in 1916) by “the big slide” from Culebra Hill (shown on the 
left). The steamer is the St. Veronica of Liverpool. 














DARWIN AND PASTEUR 597 

at work about us. This uniformitarian theory (supported by 
the discovery of fossils in the rocks) quickly induced men to 
reckon the age of the earth by aeons of time ; and soon the dis¬ 
covery of human remains in old geologic strata compelled a new 
conception of the length of man’s life upon the earth. 

In the study of the animal world a like change was taking 
place. Here and there some thinker had hinted that the plants 
and animals we see about us must have all “evolved” by slow 
changes from one or at least from a few elementary types. 
In 1859 Charles Darwin gave this theory of “ evolution ” a 
name in his Origin of Species by Natural Selection. The causes 
that Darwin suggested are no longer regarded as an adequate 
explanation of the process he described, and scientists have 
devised various new explanations to supplement or replace 
Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” The general idea, however, 
of an evolutionary process is widely accepted ; but many earnest 
thinkers combat it as “ unproved.” 

Several years earlier came the discovery (about 1840) that 
each animal or vegetable organism is made up of minute cells of 
protoplasm (a living substance of a character resembling gela¬ 
tine). These cells in each living thing, it was discovered, come 
from one original parent cell, and develop in different ways 
according to the nature of the organ they are to form (hair, 
skin, muscular tissue, etc.). This cell theory made possible 
a new scientific study of animal life — which is called biology. 

And biology has produced a new science of medicine. In 
the 80’s the French biologist, Pasteur, broke the way, proving 
the germ theory of disease, and inventing methods of inocu¬ 
lation against some of the most dreaded forms, like hydrophobia. 
Devoted disciples followed in his footsteps. During the Amer¬ 
ican occupation of Cuba after the Spanish-American war, Major 
Walter Reed showed that ordinary malaria and the deadly 
yellow fever alike were spread by the bite of mosquitoes. In 
like manner it has been proved that certain fleas, carried by 
rats, spread the bubonic plague. In 1903 Dr. Charles W. Stiles 
proved that the inefficiency and low vitality of the “poor 
Whites” in the southern United States were due to the parasitic 


Evolution 


The cellular 
composition 
of organic 
matter 


Progress in 
medicine 










598 


THE WORLD IN 1914 


A new 
human 
solidarity 


hookworm. The special causes of typhoid and tuberculosis have 
become well known; and as this passage is being written, the 
germ that causes the dreaded infantile paralysis has been dis¬ 
covered. Each such discovery has enabled men to fight disease 
more successfully. It is not improbable that in the not distant 
future all deadly contagious diseases may be practically banished 
from the earth, — as, according to medical journals, yellow fever 
is just now banished. Between 1850 and 1900 the average hu¬ 
man life in civilized lands was lengthened by a fourth, and 
population was trebled. 

SOCIAL UPLIFT 

This larger and better life of the early twentieth century, too, 
was bound together, for good and for ill, in a new human soli¬ 
darity. Our big world is more compact than the small world of 
1800 was. Ox-cart and pack-horse have been replaced as car¬ 
riers by long lines of cars moving thousands of tons of all kinds 
of freight swiftly across continents. For bulkier commerce the 
most distant “East” and “West” have been brought near to¬ 
gether by the Suez Canal (opened in 1869) and the Panama 
Canal (built by the United States and opened in 1914); 1 while 
now the more precious articles and mails begin to be moved as 
by magic in airships, as Tennyson dreamed when in his youth he— 
“Saw the heavens fill with commerce — argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.” 

New methods of banking make it possible to transfer credit 
in an instant, by wire or wireless, between the most distant 
portions of the earth; and lines of communication are so or¬ 
ganized that it costs no more to send a letter or parcel around 
the earth than around the nearest street corner. The Minne¬ 
sota farmer’s market is not Minneapolis, but the world. The 
Australian sheep-raiser, the Canadian farmer, the South African 
miner, the New York merchant, the London banker, are parts 
of one industrial organism. 

All this solidarity means one more revolution in industry. 
The age of small individual enterprise has given way to an era of 

1 Special reports upon this buildine and on present use of these routes. 





MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 599 

vast consolidation of capital and management — department 
stores, mighty corporations, huge trusts, flouring centers like 
Minneapolis, meat-packing centers like Chicago, money centers 
like Wall Street. And this consolidation has brought incalcu¬ 
lable saving of wealth in economy of management and in utili¬ 
zation of old wastes into by-products. 

The new unity of society, too, has its moral side. Any hap¬ 
pening of consequence is known within the hour in London, 
Petrograd, Peking, New York, Vancouver, and, within a day, 
in almost every hamlet where civilized men live. A world 
opinion shapes itself, in ordinary times, as promptly as village 
opinion could be brought to bear upon an individual citizen a 
century ago. 

But even before the horrible catastrophe of the World War, it 
was plain enough that all this modern progress had a darker side. 
True, there was more life, and better life; and there was more 
wealth to support life. The workers, too, though they got too 
little of that wealth, got vastly more than in 1800. An 
industrious, healthy artisan of to-day usually has a more 
enjoyable life than a great noble a century ago. Still the in¬ 
dustrial organization which produced wealth with gratifying 
rapidity failed to distribute it equitably. The world had be¬ 
come rich; but multitudes of workers remained ominously 
poor. And this modern poverty is harder to bear than that of 
earlier times because it is less necessary. Then there was 
little wealth to divide. Now the poor man is jostled by ostenta¬ 
tious affluence and vicious waste. 

Throughout the civilized world earnest men and women, 
as never before in history, had begun to band themselves into 
many kinds of “social uplift” organizations to relieve or remove 
this misery. Until toward the close of the nineteenth century 
such movements were mainly charitable in their character. 
Then they began to work, not merely to treat the social disease, 
but to remove its cause. They ceased to call for charity, and 
began to work for social justice — for some improved organiza¬ 
tion of industry that should secure to the worker a larger share 
of the product of his labor and so insure him against the need of 


A dark side 


Failure as 
yet to dis¬ 
tribute 
wealth 


The demand 
for “ social 
justice ” 







600 


THE WORLD IN 1914 


charity. Enlightened thinkers and statesmen entered upon 
a new and more promising “war against poverty/’ rec¬ 
ognizing also that such a course was necessary, not merely 
for the welfare of the poor, but also for the salvation of all 
society. 















CHAPTER LXII 


WORLD POLITICS TO 1914 

I. ENCROACHMENTS UPON AFRICA AND ASIA 

Modern civilization is based upon “industrialism.” The 
greater the industrial development of a country, the more em¬ 
ployment and better pay for its workingmen, and the more 
profit for its capitalists. Now the life blood of industrialism is 
trade : trade not merely with civilized nations, but (sometimes 
much more) with tropical and subtropical countries for oil, rub¬ 
ber, ivory, minerals, and other raw materials needed by factories 
in civilized lands. Moreover, thanks to modern factory pro¬ 
cesses, every industrial country (which can get adequate sup¬ 
plies of raw materials) has a much greater factory output than 
its own people can buy. The factories cannot keep running full 
speed without outside markets in which to sell. In the indus¬ 
trial states, too (before the World War), wealth accumulated 
faster, at times, than it could be invested profitably, — so that 
capitalists were anxious for outside investments, especially in 
countries with naturally rich but as yet undeveloped resources. 

Add to these facts a fourth fact, — that in most of the rich 
tropical and subtropical regions there have been (until lately) 
no strong states to protect the inhabitants against outside en¬ 
croachments — and we have the main explanations of the rival¬ 
ries among the great civilized nations for colonial empire. Each 
seeks the largest possible part of the world’s raw materials for 
its factories to work up into finished products, the largest mar¬ 
kets for those products (all the better if a sole, or exclusive, 
market), and the best “concessions” from semi-barbarous 
states to its capitalists for exclusive rights to build railroads 
or develop mines. 


Trade es¬ 
sential to 
modern 
civilization 


Causes of 
“ imperial 1 
policies 


601 









602 


RECENT WORLD POLITICS 


Imperialism 
and war 


In the eight¬ 
eenth cen¬ 
tury 


In the nine¬ 
teenth cen¬ 
tury 


This “imperialism” (or desire for empire for the sake of trade) has 
been the underlying cause of most modern wars. 1 And yet, under ex¬ 
isting conditions, it is useless to blame any one nation for trying to grab 
the oil of Mesopotamia, the coal of China, the ivory of the Congo, or 
the rubber of Mexico. The blame lies in the amazing fact that the 
nations have not made more serious attempts to change the system of 
commercial cannibalism. Rightly seen, the vast raw wealth of the 
globe belongs to no one or two arbitrary political divisions of the 
globe’s population: it is the heritage of the whole world, present and 
to come. When we grow civilized enough, there will be some world- 
organization to conserve these resources and to see that all nations may 
share on some basis of equal opportunity or of need. True, this is much 
to expect while each nation still permits grasping individuals to engross 
within its own borders that natural wealth that should belong to all 
its people. But, if the task is great, so is the need. It must be solved, 
if civilization is to survive. Until there is such a world organization, 
annihilating world-war will not cease to threaten. The real work 
of a League of Nations will be not so much to “enforce peace,” to for¬ 
bid war, as to remove the chief excuse for war by doing justice among 
the peoples. 

In the eighteenth century, trade rivalry became world¬ 
wide war. From 1689 to 1783, France and England wrestled 
incessantly for world empire, grappling on every continent and 
every sea; while, as allies of this one or of that, the other powers 
grasped at crumbs of European booty. The close saw France 
almost stripped of her old dependencies; and, a little later, 
when she was at war during her Revolution, England sought to 
complete the victory. Then for a while Napoleon seemed 
likely to regain the Mississippi valley and India; but Waterloo 
left Britain “the mightiest nation upon earth,” for some sev¬ 
enty years without an aggressive rival for world dominion. 
During that period, other European nations got along somehow 
because trade had not yet become the supremely vital thing 
it was soon to be. But steam and electricity were swiftly draw¬ 
ing the globe’s most distant provinces into intimate unity, and, 
with the spread of the Industrial Revolution (p. 561), world 
trade was taking on a new importance. Accordingly, after 
1871, the new industrial French Republic began to seek ex- 


1 For ancient war also, cf. pp. 35, 124, 174, and elsewhere. 















































































PARTITION OF AFRICA AND ASIA 


603 


pansion in north Africa and southeastern Asia; and in 1884, at 
the Congress of Berlin, the new industrial German Empire gave 
notice that thenceforth it meant to share in the plunder. The 
next quarter-century saw keen competition between Germany, 
France, and Britain (already partially satisfied) for the world’s 
remaining rich provinces defended only by “inferior” races. 
European politics were suddenly merged in world politics. The 
possession of petty counties on the Rhine or the Danube ceased 
to interest peoples who had fixed their eyes on vast continents. 

Australia was already English. North America was held by 
the United States or Britain, South and Central America 
were protected beneath the shield of the Monroe Doctrine. 
Africa, however, was largely unappropriated, and now its seiz¬ 
ure was swift. In 1880 only a few patches here and there on the 
coast were European ; in 1891 (except for Liberia and Abyssinia) 
the continent was mapped out between European claimants 
(map opposite) — mainly between Britain, France, and Ger¬ 
many, though Belgium held the “Congo Free State,” a rich 
territory of 1,000,000 square miles in the heart of the continent 
with 30,000,000 native inhabitants. (It must be understood, 
however, that, except for British South Africa, and part of 
French Algeria, European settlement has not entered the con¬ 
tinent to any considerable degree, nor have the natives been 
Europeanized.) 

By 1890, also, the partition of Asia was well under way — 
though in this continent too, except for a few trading stations, 
there has been no real European “colonization.” Central and 
northern Asia had become Russian; the vast, densely popu¬ 
lated peninsula of India (with adjoining Burma) was English; 
the southeastern peninsula was mainly French. Of the five 
remaining native states, Afghanistan, Persia, and Siam were 
merely weak and helpless survivals permitted to exist by 
cautious European diplomacy as “buffer states,” separating 
England from Russia on one side and from France on the other; 
and, before the century closed, the Turkish Empire (p. 623) and 
even the ancient Chinese Empire had begun to go to pieces. 

Here we must note that in the closing years of the nineteenth 


New world- 
problems 


Partition of 
Africa 


Europe in 
Asia 







604 


WORLD POLITICS 


The United 
States a 
World 
Power 


Land and 
people 


Western 

ization 


century two new actors appeared to dispute world empire with 
the old claimants. A war between Japan and China (p. 605) re¬ 
vealed despjsed Japan as a great modernized World Power 
that must henceforth be reckoned with, especially in Asiatic 
questions; and the Spanish-American War of 1898 brought 
the United States to the door of Asia. The United States had 
been sufficiently occupied for a hundred years in appropriating 
and developing her own vast territory from ocean to ocean, 
and had resolutely kept herself free from European complica¬ 
tions ; but now, her great task accomplished, she had already 
begun to reach out for the islands of the sea and for Asiatic 
trade. Then during the war with Spain, she annexed Hawaii 
and at the close she retained the Philippines. 

II. JAPAN 

Japan proper consists of a crescent-shaped group of islands 
with an area a fourth larger than the entire British Isles. Popu¬ 
lation is only slightly larger than the British, but it increases 
rapidly and it is already much more “crowded,” because only 
a small part of the land is tillable (much of that only with 
immense toil, in terraces of built-up soil on steep mountain sides), 
and because factory industry, though now growing rapidly, is still 
far less developed than in America or Europe. Accordingly, 
labor is very cheap, and the standard of living is low. In spite 
of this, the short, brown people have remarkably vigorous and 
well-developed bodies and strong, alert intellects. Their man¬ 
ners are marked by Oriental courtesy (which our ruder West¬ 
ern world sometimes looks upon as extravagant if not deceitful), 
and naturally many of their customs are strange and even shock¬ 
ing to Europeans and Americans. 

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan kept herself 
sealed against the outside world. For two centuries, even to trade 
with foreigners had been punishable with death. The Mikado 
(emperor) was absolute and was worshiped as a god; and a 
small class of feudal nobles, backed by numerous hereditary 
military retainers ( samurai ) kept the common people in a bond¬ 
age not unlike that in ancient Egypt. But in 1853 Commodore 


AND JAPAN 


605 


Perry, under orders from the United States government, by a 
show of force secured the opening of Japanese ports to American 
trade. 

Humiliated by this demonstration of the superior strength 
of Western civilization, the intelligent Japanese swiftly 
adopted many of its features. Before the close of the century, 
army, navy, schools, and industry were made over on Western 
models. Even sooner, feudalism and serfdom were abolished; 
and in 1889 a liberal Mikado proclaimed a constitution which 
created a parliament and ministry at least as powerful as that 
then existing in the German Empire. In recent years the min¬ 
istry tends more and more to become truly “responsible”; and 
a progressive labor movement is already becoming a factor in 
politics. At the same time, it remains true that, since the fall 
of German and Russian autocracy in the World War, Japan is 
nearer a military despotism than is any other great power. 

Soon after Japan had become Westernized, she began to look 
eagerly for colonial acquisitions — partly as an outlet for her 
overcrowded population; and in 1894 her attempts to secure 
new privileges in the neighboring kingdom of Korea (a depend¬ 
ency of China) brought on war with the huge Chinese Empire. 
The Chinese fought with their usual fanatic bravery; but their 
arms and organization were Oriental, and little Japan won 
swift victory on land and sea. China agreed to cede not only 
Korea with the neighboring Port Arthur, but also the island of 
Formosa. But Japan in Korea would have forever blocked the 
natural Russian ambition for an ice-free Pacific port, and now 
the Russian Tsar, backed by France, insisted that Japan should 
renounce Korea and Port Arthur (which meant virtually that 
China should turn these districts over to Russia instead of 
to Japan). 

Japan was unprepared for war with European powers, and 
was wise enough to yield for the time; but she began at once to 
make ready patiently and skillfully for a struggle with Russia — 
which came ten years later (p. 609). Meantime the European 
powers felt at least obliged to recognize Japan more nearly as an 
equal. A series of new treaties removed various restrictions 


Revealed a 
World 
Power: 
Chinese 
War of 
1894-1895 


Russian 

rivalry 




606 


WORLD POLITICS 


Anglo-Jap- 
anese pact 
of 1902 


Land and 
people 


Stagnant 

civilization 


which had interfered with Japan’s control of her own trade, 
and also abolished the European courts which had been set up 
within her territory to try cases in which Europeans were inter¬ 
ested. Then in 1902 Japanese diplomacy secured a twenty- 
year defensive treaty with Britain, in which each party agreed 
to aid the other in war if it were engaged with more than one 
power. (This meant that when the war with Russia should 
come, Japan would have only Russia to deal with.) 

III. CHINA 

Including its many outlying and loosely dependent districts 
(like Thibet and Mongolia) China has an area and a population 
about equal to those of Europe; but China proper, containing 
half the area and three fourths the population, consists of 
eighteen provinces in the basins of the Hwangho and Yangtse 
river systems. Here, near the coast especially, population is 
densely crowded, considering the backward nature of industry. 
Most of the soil of China proper is fertile; but, in the absence 
of suitable means of transportation and communication, agri¬ 
cultural produce away from the coast has little value. The 
mineral deposits (including coal and oil) are probably the richest 
in the world; but, except for recent “concessions” to Euro¬ 
peans, they are almost untouched. 

Even in China proper, the people belong to many distinct 
tribes with quite different dialects and with little in common 
except their patriotic pride in their common Chinese civiliza¬ 
tion and their contempt for all outside “barbarians.” The 
Chinese civilization was old before that of Rome began. 
Printing, gunpowder, paper, delicate work in silks and in 
chinaware, the mariner’s compass, were all known in China 
for centuries before they appeared in Europe. The individual 
Chinamen, too, are industrious and energetic. But for the past 
2000 years , Chinese culture has made no advance. 

Three causes help to explain this stationary or stagnant char¬ 
acter of Chinese civilization. (1) The very complex system 
of picture writing, employing thousands of symbols instead of 
only twenty-six, imprisons the mind of the educated class. This 


PLATE XCIX 



Hasedera Temple, Province of Yamato, Japan. — Number eight of the 
thirty-three places sacred to Kwannon, the goddess of mercy, who, ac¬ 
cording to Japanese belief, divided herself into parts in order to ministei 
to as many as possible, in accordance with their particular need. 




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AND CHINA 


607 


is the more serious because the educated class of mandarins 
is also the ruling and the official class. There is no hereditary 
nobility in China; the mandarin class is open to any youth 
who acquires the necessary ability to read and to pass a satis¬ 
factory examination in certain sacred books. But the stren¬ 
uous attention which all mandarin youth must give for so many 
formative years to the mere forms of words, and then to memor¬ 
izing books of maxims, works against interest in new ideas. 

(2) Perhaps as a result of this, Confucius, the moral teacher 
of China, who about 500 b.c. compiled and arranged these 
sacred volumes, makes reverence for ancestors and for prec¬ 
edent fundamental virtues. To men so trained, innovation 
becomes a sin. 

(3) Moreover, China for thousands of years was effectively 
shut off from all other civilized countries by almost impassable 
deserts and mountains, so that she received no new ideas from 
without. 

In the seventeenth century the Mongol Tartar rule over 
China (p. 395) was succeeded by the rule of the Manchus 
(a conquering tribe from north-central Asia). An early monarch 
of this line compelled every Chinaman to wear his hair in a queue 
as a sign of subjection. This line of emperors continued ab¬ 
solute — in form — down to our own time; but very soon after 
the conquest the real management of the empire reverted to the 
mandarin class. 

After the voyage of Da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope, 
European traders began to try for admission into Cathay (China) 
to secure its tea and silk in exchange for Western goods. The 
Chinese government, however, for three centuries permitted 
these foreigners to deal only in the one port of Canton—'where 
Portuguese, Dutch, and English established posts. The English 
found the greatest profits in bringing in opium from India. 
The Chinese government saw that this drug was ruining thou¬ 
sands of its people, and, very properly, in 1839 it tried to stop 
that trade altogether. The English government then entered 
upon the “Opium War,” and it was supported (it is instructive 


European 

trade 


The Opium 
War 






608 


WORLD POLITICS 


Disinte¬ 

gration 


The Boxer 
rising 


to note) by English public opinion, which apparently supposed 
that Great Britain was merely breaking through barbarous 
trade restrictions — as the United States was soon to do in 
Japan (p. 605). 

Britain of course was speedily victorious, and the treaty 
of peace forced China to cede the island of Hongkong (which 
is still British) and to open to foreign commerce a number of 
important ports. The helpless Empire was soon compelled 
also to admit Christian missionaries and to permit foreigners 
to travel through its realms. 

Next came the actual seizure of whole outlying provinces — 
Burma by England, much of Indo-China by France, and the 
valley of the Amur by Russia. After the Chino-Japanese War of 
1894-5, too, Russia, in return for her “protection,” induced 
China to “lease” her Port Arthur for a hundred years (!) and 
to grant her railway rights across Manchuria (with the ad¬ 
mission of Russian soldiers to guard the railway). 

Then followed quickly seizures of territory in China proper. 
How Germany entered the Shantung peninsula has been told 
(p. 568). That act stimulated Britain to “induce” China 
(by the appearance of a fleet of warships) to “lease” to her 
the port of Waihaiwai — just between Port Arthur and the 
new German port Kiaochow. France secured Kwangchow-wan 
toward the south. The final partition of the ancient Empire 
seemed under way. 

But the peril called forth a violent outburst of patriotism. 
The mass of the people resented bitterly the interference of 
“foreign devils” in their affairs, and a secret society (the Boxers), 
pledged to rid China of foreigners, swept the country. In 1900 
came a widespread Boxer rising. Many missionaries and trav¬ 
elers were massacred; the German minister was slain; and 
the other European embassies in Peking were besieged. 

The siege was soon raised, and the Boxer rising crushed with 
savage retaliation, by a relief expedition in which Germany, 
Japan, the United States, England, France, and Russia joined. 
It seemed probable that the European powers would now seize 
large “indemnities” in territory, and perhaps break China in 





AND CHINA 


609 


fragments. Largely through the insistence of the United States, 
the indemnities were finally taken instead in money. 

Even before the Boxer rising the American Secretary of State, 
John Hay, had urged upon the powers the policy of preserving 
Chinese territorial integrity, in return for an “open door” 
policy by that country, suggesting also that each of the powers 
should apply that policy in those “spheres of influence” it had 
already acquired. This “open door” program, forcefully sup¬ 
ported by America and England — and by all the small com¬ 
mercial countries — had much to do now with preventing the 
complete dismemberment of China. Of course the main in¬ 
centive of American policy was the wish to keep rich Oriental 
provinces open to American trade. But this policy — per¬ 
fectly proper in itself — fell in happily with the interests of 
humanity. (The main hostility to the American policy, in 
ways both open and secret, came from Kaiser William of Ger¬ 
many — so that in a moment of extreme irritation, Hay once 
exclaimed: “ I had almost rather be the dupe of China than the 
chum of the Kaiser.”) 

During the Boxer rising, however, Russia had occupied Man¬ 
churia. She claimed that such action was necessary to protect 
her railroad there, and promised to withdraw at the return of 
peace. In 1902 this pledge was solemnly repeated; but, before 
1904, it was clear that such promises had been made only to be 
broken, and that Russia was determined not to loosen her grasp 
upon the coveted province. Moreover, she began to encroach 
upon Korea. To Japan this Russian approach seemed to im¬ 
peril not only her commercial prosperity (in Korea), but her inde¬ 
pendence as a nation. After months of futile negotiation, 
Japan resorted to war. 

To most of the world, Japan’s chances looked pitifully 
small. Russian advance in Asia seemed irresistible, and the 
small island state appeared doomed to defeat. But Russia 
fought at long range. She had to transport troops and supplies 
across Asia by a single-track railroad. Her railway service 
was of a low order (like all her forms of engineering), and her 
rolling stock was inferior and insufficient. To be sure, it was 


America’s 

“Open 

Door” 

policy 


The Russo- 
Jap War, 
1904 





610 


WORLD POLITICS 


Yalu, Port 
Arthur, and 
Mukden 


Togo’s naval 
victory 


supposed that immense supplies had already been accumulated 
at Port Arthur and in Manchuria, in expectation of war; but 
it proved that high officials of the autocracy had made way 
with the larger part of the money designed to secure such 
equipment. Inefficiency, corruption, lack of organization, 
were matched only by boastful overconfidence. 

Japan, on the other hand, had the most perfectly organized 
army, hospital service, and commissariat the world had ever 
seen. Her leaders were patriotic, honest, faithful, and always 
equal to the occasion; and the whole nation was animated by 
a spirit of ardent self-sacrifice. By her admirable organization, 
Japan was able, at all critical moments, to confront the Russians 
with equal or superior numbers, even after a year of war, when 
she had rolled back the battle line several hundred miles 
toward the Russian base. 

At the outset, Japan could hope for success only by secur¬ 
ing naval control of Asiatic waters. Russia had gathered at 
Port Arthur a fleet supposedly much stronger than Japan’s 
whole navy; but (.February 8, 1904 ) Japan struck the first 
blow, 'torpedoing several mighty battleships and cruisers. The 
rest of the Russian fleet was blockaded in the harbor; and, 
to the end of the war, Japan transported troops and supplies 
by water almost without interference. 

Korea was swiftly overrun. The Russians were driven back 
from the Yalu in a great battle, and again defeated at Liaou 
Yang; and after a seven months’ siege, marked by terrible 
suffering and reckless sacrifice on both sides, the Japanese cap¬ 
tured the “invulnerable” Port Arthur (January, 1905). The 
severe northern winter interrupted the campaign; but in March, 
1905, the Japanese resumed their advance. The Battle of Muk¬ 
den was the most tremendous military struggle the world had 
seen. It lasted fifteen days. The battle front extended a hun¬ 
dred miles, and a million men were engaged, with all the terrible, 
destructive agencies of modern science at their command. The 
Russians were completely routed, and driven back on Harbin. 

Russia’s only chance was to regain command of the sea. 
During the winter of 1905, after a year of delays, a huge fleet, 































Hammei 


'resden 


^VIENNA 


BELGI 

BOSNIA 


CeTINJgj®/'' V,. 


dal quin l 


L.l. POATES, ENGR., N.Y. 


En aland) 


Longitude 


West 0 


Longitude 


from Greenwich 










































iL A N D 


Lake 

■.Onega 


jfl.osco« 


CRIMEA 1 


suv.tsu 


, O u 
'anube 


® BOC 


CYPRUS ( 

To England, 


EUROPE 

in 1914 


111 


_ SCALE OF MILES 

6 l5o 200 300 









































THE RUSSO-JAP WAR 


611 


far exceeding the Japanese navy in number and in size, but 
poorly equipped and miserably officered, had set out on the 
long voyage from the Baltic. By a breach of neutrality on the 
part of France, it was allowed to rest and refit at Madagascar, 
and again at the French stations near Southern China; and in 
May it reached the Sea of Japan. There it was annihilated 
by the splendidly handled Japanese fleet, under Admiral Togo, 
in one of the greatest of the world’s naval battles. 

Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, now Treaty of 
“offered his good offices” to secure peace; and a meeting of Portsmouth 
envoys was arranged (August, 1905, at Portsmouth, N. H.), at 
which the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed. Japan’s demands 
were exceedingly moderate, and she yielded even a part of 
these at President Roosevelt’s urgent appeal for peace. Russia 
agreed (1) to withdraw from Chinese Manchuria, (2) to cede 
the Port Arthur branch of her railroad to China, (3) to recog¬ 
nize a Japanese protectorate in Korea, and (4) to cede to 
Japan the southern half of Sakhalin, — an island formerly be¬ 
longing to Japan but occupied by Russia in 1875. 

The most important results of the war were indirect results. 

Russia was checked in her career of aggression in Europe and 
toward India, as well as in the Far East, and the collapse of 
her despotic government gave opportunity for the beginning 
of a great revolution in society and politics (p. 592). Her de¬ 
feat was a blessing to her own people. On the other hand, 
victory intensified imperialistic and militaristic tendencies in 
Japan, and her cruel rule in Korea soon alienated much of th.e 
sympathy her gallantry had won in America and England. 

One other change, vast and beneficent, is at least closely The Chi- 
connected with the war. China had recently begun to follow R e e ^ e olution 
Japan’s example in sending part of her youth abroad to com¬ 
plete their education, especially to America; and Western ideas 
had begun to spread among the mandarin class. The national 
humiliation in the war with Japan in 1894 and in the Boxer War, 
and now the marvelous victory of Westernized Japan over 
Russia, reinforced the advocates of Western civilization for 










612 


WORLD POLITICS 


China a re¬ 
public 


China. In 1909 the regent (Empress Dowager, whose Emperor- 
son was still a babe) promised a constitution “in the near fu¬ 
ture.” The agitation of the Liberals then forced her to fix the 
date for 1913. But this was not soon enough. In 1911 Central 
China rose in revolution, to make the many provinces of the 
empire into a federal republic. 

The movement spread with marvelous rapidity, and in a 
few weeks the Republicans, in possession of the richest and 
most populous parts of the empire, set up a provisional republican 
government, at Nanking, under the presidency of an enlight¬ 
ened patriot, Dr. Sun Yat Sen. In an attempt to save the 
monarchy, the Empress then issued a constitution, and called 
to power a moderate reformer, Yuan Shih Kai (yoo-an she ki). 
When it quickly appeared that this was not enough, the Man- 
chus abdicated. Yuan Shih Kai established a provisional 
republican government at Peking, and opened negotiations 
with the Nanking government. To remove all hindrance to 
union, Sun Yat Sen resigned. Then the two provisional 
governments elected Yuan Shih Kai president of the “Re¬ 
public of China.” 

In April, 1913, the first Chinese parliament assembled, rep¬ 
resenting four hundred million people. The new president, 
however, proved self-seeking and reactionary. Leading Liberals 
were assassinated, supposedly by his orders, and probably only 
his own death kept him from making himself emperor. The 
Peking government long remained virtually a military dictator¬ 
ship ; but in the south a progressive republic was soon recon¬ 
structed under Dr. Sun. 

A fourth of the population of the globe cannot be expected to 
lift itself into civilization and orderly freedom in a day. Prog¬ 
ress in China, however, has gone much further than a mere 
change in external political forms. Western types of schools 
and of industry have been introduced over wide areas in the 
brief period, 1913-1923; and much advance has been made in 
freeing women from ancient servile customs — like that of 
binding the feet. 

On the other hand, while the Western World was occupied 




RECENT DEMOCRATIC ADVANCE 613 

in war in 1915, and while China was still too much distracted 
by revolution to offer effective resistance, Japan forced the 
Peking government to accept treaties embodying a now famous 
set of “ twenty-one points,” by which the aggressive island 
empire secured great control in the internal affairs of its huge 
neighbor. 

IV. A SUMMARY OF DEMOCRATIC ADVANCE 


i 




The marvelous story of China’s transformation makes this a 
good place to sum up the world’s political advance down to the 
World War. In 1830, Britain, France, Holland, Switzerland, 
and Norway were the chief Old-World countries which were not 
absolute despotisms; and these countries were far from being 
the democracies they are now. During the remaining two 
thirds of the nineteenth century, constitutional government 
spread eastward from England through Europe, and west from 
the United States to Japan. In 1900 Russia and little Monte¬ 
negro (with the possessions of Turkey) were the only European 
states still unaffected by the movement, along with Turkey, 
Persia, China, and Siam in Asia; and in 1913 Siam was the 
only sovereign state on this earth without a representative as¬ 
sembly and some degree of constitutional government. The 
story has been told for all countries except Persia and Turkey. 

In Persia the Shah was induced, by a peaceful but general middle- 
class demand, to grant a constitution in 1906. On his death (1907), 
the new monarch attempted to overthrow the liberal movement by 
force, but a general revolt deposed him and restored the constitution, 
seating a boy upon the throne under the guidance of liberal ministers. 
This government, however, was far too weak to withstand the encroach¬ 
ments of Russia and Britain upon the country; and Persia remained 
distracted by revolts. 

In the Turkish Empire a “Young Turk” party established a parlia¬ 
ment in 1908 by an almost bloodless revolution — since the army 
officers very largely joined the movement. It must be understood, 
however, that constitutionalism has as yet taken little hold upon 
most of the people. 


More significant, too, than the introduction of representative 
forms in Oriental lands was the swift extension of the suffrage 


Growth of 
constitu¬ 
tionalism 














614 


THE WORLD OF 1914 


The Triple 
Alliance 


Bismarck 
prefers Aus¬ 
tria to 
Russia 


in the western countries — to full manhood suffrage and then 
to equal suffrage for all men and women. This topic has been 
treated in detail in the story of the several countries. (See in¬ 
dex for reviews.) 

V. MAKING “ALLIANCES ” FOR PEACE 

The new social solidarity had its peril as well as its promise. 
By 1910, Europe had fallen into two hostile camps, the Triple 
Alliance and the Triple Entente. 

1. After 1871 Bismarck sought to isolate France, so as to keep 
her from finding any ally in a possible “war of revenge.” To 
this end he cultivated friendship especially with Russia and 
Austria. Austria he had beaten in war only a few years earlier 
(1866); but the ruling German element in Austria was quite 
ready now to find backing in the powerful and successful 
German Empire. 

Soon, however, Bismarck found that he must choose between 
Austria and Russia. These two were bitter rivals for control 
in the Balkans. The Slav peoples there, recently freed from 
the Turks, looked naturally to Russia, who had won their free¬ 
dom for them, as the “Big Brother” of all Slavs and all 
Greek religionists. But Austria, shut out now from control 
in Central Europe, was bent upon aggrandizement to the south. 
In particular her statesmen meant to win a strip of territory 
through to Saloniki, on the Aegean, so that, with a railroad 
thither, they might control the rich Aegean trade. Now Serbia, 
one of these Slav states, dreamed of a South Slav state reaching 
to the Adriatic, — which would interpose an inseparable Slav 
barrier across the path of Austria’s ambition. Accordingly 
Austria sought always to keep Serbia weak and small; while 
Russia, hating Austria even more than she loved the Balkan 
Slavs, backed Serbia. (Map, p. 625.) 

This rivalry between Austria and Russia became so acute 
by 1879 that there was always danger of war; and in that year 
Bismarck chose to side with Austria as the surer ally. Accord¬ 
ingly he formed a definite written alliance with Austria to the 
effect that Germany would help Austria in case she had a war 


PLATE Cl 


V 


0 














' 





Constantinople and the Golden Horn, — a view from an airplane. 


















































ARMED ALLIANCES FOR PEACE ” 


615 


ti 


with Russia, and Austria would help Germany in case she were 
attacked by France and any other Power. Three years later, 
while Italy was bitterly enraged at the French seizure of Tunis 
(p. 555), Bismarck added Italy to his league, making it the 
Triple Alliance. 

2. Then Russia and France, each isolated in Europe, drew 
together for mutual protection into a “Dual Alliance” (1891). 
Britain long held aloof from both leagues. In the ’eighties 
and ’nineties, England and France were bitter rivals in Africa, 
and England and Russia, in Asia. But after Bismarck’s fall, 
Britain began to see in the German emperor’s colonial ambi¬ 
tions a more threatening rival than France; and Russia’s de¬ 
feat by Japan made Russia less dangerous. German militarism, 
too, was deeply hateful to English democracy. Moreover, Eng¬ 
land and France were daily coming to a better understanding, 
and in 1903 a sweeping arbitration treaty put any war between 
them almost out of question. Soon afterward, England and 
Russia succeeded in agreeing upon a line in Persia which should 
separate the “influence” of one power in that country from 
the “influence” of the other, so removing all immediate prospect 
of trouble between the two. From this time the Dual Alliance be¬ 
came the Triple Entente — Britain, France, and Russia. Britain 
was not bound by definite treaty to give either country aid in 
war; but it was plain that France and Russia were her friends. 

Each of the two huge armed leagues always' protested that 
its aim was peace, and for half a century after 1871 Europe did 
have no war, except the struggles in the half-savage Balkans. 
But this “peace” was based upon fear, and it was costly. Year 
by year, each alliance strove to make its armies and navies 
mightier than the other’s. Huge and huger cannon were in¬ 
vented, only to be cast into the scrap heap for still huger ones. 
A dreadnought costing millions was scrapped in a few months 
for some costlier design. The burden upon the workers and 
the evil moral influences of such armaments were only less than 
the burden and evil of war (p. 563). In every land voices be¬ 
gan to cry out that it was all needless: that the world was too 
Christian and too wise ever again to let itself be desolated by a 


Italy drawn 
into Bis¬ 
marck’s 
league 


The Dual 
Alliance of 
1891 


England’s 
“ splendid 
isolation ” 


The Triple 
Entente 


The alli¬ 
ances and 
peace 











616 


THE WORLD OF 1914 


The first 
modern 
“ arbitra¬ 
tion ” 


The Hague 
Congress of 
1899 


Germany 
defeats pro¬ 
posals for, 
disarming 


great war. And then came some interesting if not very zealous 
efforts to find new machinery by which to guard against war — 
in standing arbitration treaties, permanent international tri¬ 
bunals like the Hague Court, and occasional World Congresses. 

VI. INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 

The first case of arbitration between nations in modern times 
was arranged by one clause 1 of the Jay Treaty of 1794 between 
England and the United States. For nearly a hundred years 
this sensible device continued to be used mainly by the two 
English-speaking nations; but before the close of the nineteenth 
century it began to spread rapidly to other lands. During 
that century several hundred disputes were settled honorably, 
peacefully, and justly by this process. 

But in each of these cases a special treaty had to be negotiated 
before arbitration could begin — with every chance for war 
before such an arrangement could be made. Now the closing 
years of the nineteenth century saw agitation for “ general arbi¬ 
tration treaties” by which nations might agree in advance to sub¬ 
mit disputes to a certain court of arbitrators. In 1897 a treaty 
of this kind between England and the United States failed of 
adoption because of opposition in the United States Senate, 
though it had been recommended vigorously first by President 
Cleveland and afterward by President McKinley. Then leader¬ 
ship in this great movement passed for the time away from the 
English-speaking peoples. 

On August 24, 1898, by order of Tsar Nicholas (a sentimental 
lover of peace), the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs handed 
to the representatives of the different nations in St. Petersburg 
a written suggestion for a world conference to consider some 
means for arresting the danger of war and for lessening the 
burden of the armed peace. Out of this suggestion there grew 
the Hague Peace Conference of 1899. Twenty-six nations were 
represented, including Mexico, Siam, Japan, China, and Persia, 
practically all the independent states of the world except 

1 Regarding the disputed boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia, see 
Egerton s History of Canada, Part II. 




THE ARBITRATION MOVEMENT 


617 


the South American republics. Never before had any gather¬ 
ing so nearly approached a “parliament of man.” It was found 
impossible to put any limit upon armament, because the German 
representatives refused to consider that matter; but agree¬ 
ments were reached to regulate the methods of war in the 
interests of greater humanity (futile though such agreements 
were soon to prove), and, in spite of German opposition, the 
Congress provided a standing International Tribunal for arbi¬ 
tration between nations. 

No nation was compelled to submit its quarrels to this Hague 
Tribunal, but machinery was now ready so that nations could 
escape war, without loss of dignity, if they desired. (In the 
following years many important cases were so settled.) 
The next step was for groups of nations to pledge themselves 
to make use of this machinery, or of similar machinery. This 
pledge is the essence of a “general arbitration treaty.” 

While the Hague Conference was sitting, Chili and Argern 
tina (which had not been invited to the Conference) were on 
the verge of war over a boundary dispute in the Andes. For 
the next two years both governments made vigorous prepara¬ 
tions, — piling up war taxes, increasing armaments, building 
and buying ships of war. But at the last moment a popular 
movement, led by bishops of the Catholic Church in the two 
countries, brought about arbitration; and soon after, the bound¬ 
ary was adjusted rationally by a commission of geographers and 
legal experts. So well pleased were the two nations with this 
individual case of arbitration that they proceeded to adopt a 
“general treaty” by which they bound themselves, for a period 
of five years, to submit all disputes which might arise between 
them to a specific tribunal. 

This was the first “general arbitration treaty” ever actually 
adopted (June, 1903). But others were already in preparation 
in Europe ; and, four months later (October, 1903), France and 
England adopted one, agreeing to submit future disputes to the 
Hague Tribunal. Others followed swiftly, until most civilized 
states (except Germany) were joined with one or more other 
states in such agreements, usually, however, with important 


Chili and 
Argentina 





618 


THE WORLD OF 1914 


Spanish 

America 


reservations as to “ national honor, ” which often destroyed the 
force of the agreement. 

The splendid example to the world set by Argentina and Chile 
(p. 617 above), suggests forcibly that the Spanish-American 
states must be taken into account in the future world progress. 
These two, with Brazil, are the leading South American coun¬ 
tries. In recent years the three have shown a growing disposi¬ 
tion to act in close agreement in foreign relations, so that they 
are sometimes referred to (from their initials) as the ABC Con¬ 
cert. The first striking instance of such concert was a joint 
suggestion from the three in 1915 for mediation between the 
United States and Mexico, — apparently with view to protect¬ 
ing Mexico against unfriendly designs mistakenly attributed to 
the United States. (Cf. West’s American People, 703-4.) 

How the Spanish-American states became independent has 
been briefly told (pp. 457-460). Argentina’s war of independ¬ 
ence lasted from 1816 to 1823. Some years of turbulent dis¬ 
order followed; but the adoption of the present republican con¬ 
stitution, in 1853, issued in an orderly and stable era of progress. 
The country comprises fourteen “States” and ten “Territories,” 
under a federal system similar to that of the United States. 
In the ’sixties, the government began to build up an excellent 
system of public schools, with Noripal schools officered largely 
by teachers drawn from the United States. The population 
is about as large as that of Canada; and indeed Canada and 
Argentina may be said to be close rivals for second place in 
power and civilization upon the Western continent. 

Brazil became independent of Portugal in 1821, but it kept 
a monarchic government until 1889. In that year the “em¬ 
peror, Dom Pedro II, bowed magnanimously to the rising 
republican sentiment of the country, and, by his abdication, 
removed the danger of a violent revolution. Brazil’s area is 
greater than that of the United States, but the country is mainly 
undeveloped. Of a population of 25 millions, only about a 
third are Whites, and these are settled near the coast. 

These two states are perhaps the most progressive of the South 







PLATE CII 



The Christ of the Andes. 

A monument of good-will standing at an elevation of 12,000 feet on the 
boundary line between Chili and Argentina, erected by the two countries 
to commemorate their arbitration of the boundary dispute. 









PLATE CIII 



Copocabana, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, showing the entrance to that city’s famous harbor. 



























THE HAGUE CONFERENCE 


619 


American republics, though some of the others press them closely. 
Until very recent times, the main interest of the outside world 
in these countries has been in regard to their trade. They ex¬ 
port large quantities of agricultural products and of raw ma¬ 
terials. Argentina sends to Europe immense shipments of frozen 
meats and of hides and grain. Brazil exports coffee, sugar, 
tobacco, cotton, rubber, cocoa, dyewoods, and nuts. Chile 
sells costly nitrates and large supplies of precious metals. They 
are making rapid progress in manufacturing; but they are 
still buyers of factory goods on a large scale. 

The trade of the South American countries is largely in the 
hands of England — though before the World War Germany 
had begun to rtiake rapid inroads upon England’s control. In 
spite of her favorable position geographically, the United States 
has not had a sixth as much of that trade as England has. 

One of the promising features in present world conditions, 
however, is the marked tendency in the United States for the 
people to free themselves from their old ignorant and silly con¬ 
tempt for Spanish America. The increased attention to Span¬ 
ish in their high schools is a hopeful sign. A true understanding 
of one another’s civilization between the great Republic of the 
northern continent and its younger sisters to the south will 
count for progress in many ways — of which improved trade 
relations will be only the least important. 

In 1907 a Second Hague Conference met at the suggestion 
of the United States. This time the South American republics 
were represented. The Conference extended somewhat the 
work of the first meeting. But again Britain’s proposals to 
limit navies and armies failed because of opposition from Germany 
and Austria. It was growing more and more plain that all these 
noble efforts for peace were vain unless supplemented by rad¬ 
ical measures of disarmament; and Germany’s implacable 
opposition had made it plain that this was unattainable except 
by a better organized world. 

Germany’s resistance to disarmament was due of course to 
the militaristic spirit dominating her government (p. 504), 


South 

American 

trade 


Hague Con¬ 
gress of 

1907 







620 


THE WORLD OF 1914 


And the 
approach 
of war 


but it was also closely connected with her insistent feeling that 
she must acquire (by force, since she saw no other way) a larger 
“ place in the sun,” — greater colonial dominion. The nine¬ 
teenth century “expansion” of Europe into Africa and Asia 
(unlike the colonial expansion of the eighteenth century) had 
been carried forward at the expense of savage or semi-barbarous 
peoples only. For a hundred years no “great” war had been 
waged between Christian nations avowedly for greed. Indeed, 
toward the close, whenever one nation made an important seizure 
of booty, some international conference arranged compensatory 
gains for any seriously discontented rival 1 — and so preserved 
temporarily a delicate “balance” of interests. 

But this balance was one of exceedingly unstable equilibrium. 
A touch might tip it into universal ruin. And there were no 
materials to continue adjusting it on the old plan. The world 
was now parceled out. Further expansion of consequence by 
any “power” meant direct conflict with some other “power.” 
Moreover, so complicated had rivalries and alliances become, 
any conflict at all now meant a world conflict; and, so “ im¬ 
proved” were agencies of destruction, a world struggle now 
meant ruin out of all comparison with earlier wars. 

To-day this is plain enough. But until the late summer 
of 1913 the certain danger was glimpsed but dimly (outside the 


German war lords) and by only a few “dreamers.” Compla¬ 
cently the peoples and their “practical” statesmen continued 
to drift on the brink of unparalleled disaster. They did not seri¬ 
ously expect ever to use their crushing armaments; but neither 
did they resolutely seek to get rid of them 2 and to develop this 
feeble arbitration movement into a real guarantee of peace. 

* Twi ce this was done for Germany in reference to African territory - 
1905 and 1911. 

2 Churchill s proposed “naval holiday” (1913) was perhaps the most 
practical suggestion made. 

















































































































































































I 



















































































PART XVI - THE WORLD WAR 


CHAPTER LXIII 

THE CONFLAGRATION BURSTS FORTH 

I, THE BALKAN SITUATION 

We have seen the materials heaped for a world conflagration 
(pp. 614-615). A fuse was furnished by the Balkan situation. 
The little Balkan district is a crumpled criss-cross of interlacing 
mountains and valleys, peopled by tangled fragments of six 
distinct and mutually hostile peoples : the Turk, long encamped 
as a conqueror among subject Christian populations, but for 
the last hundred years slowly thrust back toward Constanti¬ 
nople ; the Greeks, mainly in the southern peninsula, with the 
Albanians just to the north along the Adriatic; the Roumanians , 
mainly north of the Danube; and, between Greece and Rou- 
mania, the Bulgarians and Serbs. The “Bulgars” (on the east, 
toward the Black Sea) came into the peninsula in the eighth 
century as conquerors from Central Asia. Originally baggy- 
trousered nomads, akin to Tartars, they have become essen¬ 
tially Slavic in blood by absorption into the peoples among 
whom they settled; but they keep a ruinous “patriotic” pride 
in their ancient history as a race of conquerors. The Serbs are 
the most direct representatives of the South Slavs who con¬ 
quered and settled the Balkan region two hundred years before 
the appearance of the Bulgars ; but in 1910 their ancient empire 
was still in fragments from accidents of Turkish rule. Bosnia, 1 
the northwestern part, had maintained itself against the con¬ 
quering Turk longest, and, becoming a distinct province under 
the Turks, had never been reunited to the rest of Serbia. The 

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina was arbitrarily annexed by Austria-Hungary in 
1908. 


The Balkan 
lands and 
peoples 


621 








622 


THE BALKANS TO 1914 


Rise of in¬ 
dependent 
Slav states 


lands of the Croats and Slovenes were reconquered from Turkey 
by Hungary in the eighteenth century, and had long been sub¬ 
ject provinces of the Austrian Empire — though they belonged 
to Serbia by race, language, and older history. And in the fast¬ 
nesses of Montenegro (“Black Mountain”) dwelt some two 
hundred thousand half-savage Serbs who had never yielded to 
the' Turk but had kept their independence at the expense of 
“five hundred years of ferocious heroism.” 



The Congress of Berlin in 1878. Bismarck in the central foreground is 
clasping the hand of the Russian representative. Lord Salisbury, an 
English delegate, is seated on the left talking with Lord Beaconsfield. 
Turkish and Bulgarian representatives are indicated by their headgear. 

We have seen how the rule of the Turk in the Balkans began 
to disintegrate. Greece won independence in an eight-year 
war (1821-1828) ; and Roumania and Serbia were advanced to 
the position of merely tributary states, ruled thenceforth by 
their own princes. The Crimean War (1856), in which France 
and England attacked Russia, bolstered up the tottering Otto¬ 
man Empire for a time, but a great collapse came twenty years 
later. The Sultan had promised many reforms for his Christian 
subjects; but these promises bore no fruit, and in 1875-1876 
the Bosnians and Bulgarians rose for independence. There 
followed the horrible events long known as the “Bulgarian 
Atrocities.” Turkish soldiers destroyed a hundred Bulgarian 






CONGRESS OF BERLIN 


623 


villages with every form of devilish torture imaginable, and 
massacred 30,000 people, carrying off also thousands of 
Christian girls into terrible slavery. Then Serbia sprang to 
arms ; and Tsar Alexander II of Russia declared war on Turkey. 
The horror in Western Europe at the crimes of the Turk pre¬ 
vented for a time any interference; and in ten months the Rus¬ 
sian armies held the Turks at their mercy. The Peace of San 
Stefano (1878) arranged for a group of free Slav states in the 
peninsula and for the exclusion of Turkey from Europe except 
for the city of Constantinople. 

But now Europe intervened. Austria wanted a share of 
Balkan plunder; England feared the advance of Russia toward 
her communications with India; and so the Peace of San Stefano 
was torn up. The Congress of Berlin (p. 524), influenced by 
Disraeli, the British Prime Minister, restored half the freed 
Christian populations to their old slavery under the Turk; 
handed over Bosnia to Austria to “administer” for Turkey, 
with a solemn provision that Austria should never annex the terri¬ 
tory to her own realms; and left the whole Balkan district in 
anarchy for a third of a century more. In fixing responsibility 
for the World War of 1914, this crime of 1878 cannot be over¬ 
looked. 

It is only fair to note that while the British government 
was chiefly responsible for that crime, the British people 
promptly repudiated it at the polls. Gladstone came forth 
from retirement to stump England against the “shameful al¬ 
liance with Abdul the Assassin”; and at the next elections 
(1880), Disraeli was overthrown by huge majorities. The wrong 
to the Balkans could not then be undone, but from this time 
Britain drew away from her old policy of courting Turkish 
friendship — wherein her place was quickly taken by Germany. 

In return, the Kaiser expected to make Turkey into a 
vassal state; and the prospect of German dominance in 
Asia Minor brought Germany and Austria into closer sym¬ 
pathy in their Balkan policies. Austria’s interference in 
those regions had been purely bad, aiming to keep the little 
Balkan states weak and mutually hostile, and especially to pre- 


Russo- 
Turkish 
War of 1877 


Congress 
of Berlin, 
1878 


German and 
Austrian 
plans at one 







624 


THE BALKANS TO 1914 


The 

“ Middle- 
Europe ” 
dream 


vent the growth of a “Greater Serbia.” Now (1898, 1899), 
Germany obtained concessions from Turkey for a railway from 
“Berlin to Bagdad,” to open up the fabulously rich Oriental 
trade. A powerful Serbia, through which that line must pass, 
might have hampered the project. Thenceforward Germany 
was ready to back Austria unreservedly in Balkan aggres¬ 
sion. And in return, Austria permitted herself to sink virtually 
into a vassal of Germany in all other foreign relations. Such 
was the origin of the German dream of a “ Mittel-Europa ” em¬ 
pire, reaching across Europe from the North Sea to the Aegean 
and the Black seas, and on through Asia Minor to the Euphrates. 


Austria an¬ 
nexes Bos¬ 
nia, 1908 


Balkan 
Wars of 
1912, 1913 


In 1908 came a step toward fulfilling the plan. Taking ad¬ 
vantage of internal dissensions in Turkey that followed the re¬ 
forms by the young Turks (p. 613), Austria formally annexed 
Bosnia, in flat contradiction of her solemn pledges. This was 
not only a brutal stroke at the sanctity of treaties, but it seemed 
also a fatal blow to any hope for a reunion of that Slav district 
with Serbia. Serbia protested earnestly, and was supported by 
Russia. But the Kaiser “took his stand in shining armor by 
the side of his ally,” as he himself put it; and Russia, still weak 
from her defeat by Japan and from her revolution of 1906, had 
to back down. 

Then came an event less favorable to the Teutonic designs. 
United action by the mutually hostile Balkan states had seemed 
impossible. But in 1912, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and 
Greece suddenly joined in a war to drive the Turk out of Europe. 
The allies won swift victories, and in a few months were almost 
at the gates of Constantinople. “Europe” intervened to ar¬ 
range the peace terms. Italy, like Austria, was hostile to a 
Greater Serbia; and at the insistence of these powers, backed 
by Germany, a new Kingdom of Albania was created, shutting 
off Serbia once more from the sea she had reached, while Monte¬ 
negro was forced, by threat of war, to give up to Albania 
Scutari, which she had conquered. Turkey was to surrender, 
mostly to Bulgaria, her remaining territory in Europe except 
for Constantinople. Germany had carried her points in this 




WARS OF 1912-1913 


625 


settlement; but her ally, Turkey, had collapsed, and events 
were at once to show that in siding with Bulgaria she had 
blundered again. 

The treaty left Bulgaria almost the only gainer. The cheated 
allies demanded that she now share her gains with them. She 



1912 1913 

The Balkan States. 


refused ; and at once (June, 1913) followed “the Second Balkan 
War.” Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Roumania attacked 
Bulgaria. The Turks seized the chance to reoccupy Adrian- 
ople and were permitted to keep it. In a month Bulgaria was 
crushed, and a new division of booty was arranged. Greece 
won the richest prize, including the city of Saloniki; but each 
of the other allies secured gains. 

The primitive Balkan peoples now hated one another with 
an intensified ferocity. Especially did Bulgar now hate Serb 
and Greek. Serbia, too, was still cheated of her proper desire 
for an outlet on the Adriatic, her only natural gateway to the 
































































626 


THE WORLD WAR 


Drifting 


Prussian 

militarism 


outside world, and she resented fiercely the Austrian and Italian 
policy which had so balked her — especially as Austria now 
shut out all her pork, and so made valueless her droves of pigs, 
her chief form of wealth. Austria felt deeply humiliated by the 
outcome of the Second Balkan War, and was planning to re¬ 
dress her loss of prestige by striking Serbia savagely on the first 
occasion. 

There followed in 1913 a new and ominous stride in mili¬ 
tarism. First Germany adopted a new army bill, to increase 
her army in peace from 650,000 to 870,000. Three weeks later 
(July 20) France raised her term of active service from two years 
to three, and Austria and Russia at once took like measures. 
Each country of course found excuse for further efforts in like 
efforts by its rivals. 

n. GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 

One reason why the world drifted so complacently toward 
catastrophe was the general belief that, despite their armaments, 
the great “Christian” states were too good or at least too wise 
ever again to engage in war with one another merely for plunder 
— with the terrible ruin that such war must bring under modern 
conditions. And this belief was in itself a safeguard, in a meas¬ 
ure. The catastrophe would at least have been postponed, 
except that one great nation did not share the faith in peace, 
or the desire for it. The willing hand to light the deadly fuse 
was Germany’s. 

For half a century Germany had been ruled by a Prussian 
despotism resting upon an old bigoted and arrogant oligarchy 
of birth, and a new, greedy, scheming oligarchy of money. That 
rule had conferred on Germany many benefits. It had cared for 
the people as zealously as the herdsman cares for the flocks 
he expects to shear. But in doing so it had amazingly trans¬ 
formed the old peace-loving, gentle German people. It had 
taught that docile race to bow to Authority rather than to Right; 
to believe Germany stronger, wiser, better, than “decaying” 
England, “decadent and licentious” France, “uncouth and 
anarchic” Russia, or “money-serving” America; to be ready to 




GERMANY WILLS IT 


627 


accept a program, at the word of command, for imposing German 
Kultur upon the rest of the world by force; to regard war, even 
aggressive war, not as horrible and sinful, but as beautiful, 
desirable, and right, — the final measure of a nation’s worth, 
and the divinely appointed means for saving the world by Ger¬ 
man conquest; and finally to disregard ordinary morality, 
national or individual, whenever it might interfere with the 
victory of the “ Fatherland.” 

This diseased “patriotism ” began with the war-begotten Em¬ 
pire. As early as 1872, Von Schellendorf, Prussian War-Minis¬ 
ter, wrote: 

“Do not forget the civilizing task which Providence assigns 
us. Just as Prussia was destined to be the nucleus of Germany, 
so the new Germany shall be the nucleus of a future Empire 
of the West. ... We will successively annex Denmark, Hol¬ 
land, Belgium, . . . and finally northern France. . . . No 
coalition of the world can stop us.” Leaders of German thought 
adopted this tone, until it dominated pulpit, press, university, 
and all society. Treitschke, a leading historian, could teach 
impiously: “War is part of the divinely appointed order. . . . 
War is both justifiable and moral, and the idea of perpetual 
peace is both impossible and immoral. . . . The salvation of 
Germany can be attained only by the annihilation of the smaller 
states.” The Kaiser had long been a noisy preacher of this 
evil doctrine. Said he (at Bremen, March 22, 1900): “We 
are the salt of the earth. . . . God has called us to civilize the 
world. . . . We are the missionaries of human progress.” School 
children had these ideas drilled into them. And Jung Deutsch¬ 
land, official organ of the Young German League (an organization 
corresponding in a rough way to our Boy Scouts), explained 
more specifically: “ War is the noblest and holiest expression 
of human activity. For us, too, the glad, great hour of battle 
will strike. Still and deep in the German heart must live the 
joy of battle and the longing for it. Let us ridicule to the ut¬ 
most the old women in breeches who fear war and deplore it as 
cruel and revolting. No; war is beautiful. Its august sub¬ 
limity elevates the human heart beyond the earthly and the 


“ Out of 
their own 
mouths ” 



628 


THE WORLD WAR 


Protests few 
and weak 


The occa¬ 
sion in the 
Balkans 


common. In the cloud palace above sit the heroes Frederick 
the Great and Bliicher; and all the men of action — the great 
Emperor, Moltke, Roon, Bismarck — are there as well, but 
not the old women who would take away our joy in war. . . . 
That is the heaven of young Germany” 

True, a few lonely voices, mainly Socialists, protested against 
this doctrine of insolent and ruthless Might. Indeed the bulk of 
the peasants and artisans wished not war but peace; but these 
were silent social forces, unorganized and passive. And even these 
elements were deeply influenced by the persistent propaganda 
that England hated their country and was only waiting a chance 
to destroy it. Between 1912 and 1914, to be sure, the German 
ambassador to England, Prince Lichnowsky, 1 repeatedly as¬ 
sured his government of England’s friendly and pacific feeling. 
But these communications, so out of tune with the purpose of 
the German government, never reached the German people. 

In June, 1914, the Kiel Canal from the Baltic to the North 
Sea was finally opened to the passage of the largest ships of 
war. Now Germany was ready, and her war lords were grow¬ 
ing anxious to strike before France and Russia should have time 
to put into effect their new army laws (p. 626). 

And at this instant came just the occasion the German war 
lords wished. Ever since its unjust seizure by Austria (p. 624), 
Bosnia had been seething with conspiracies against Austrian 
rule. June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne, the Arch¬ 
duke Francis, and his wife, were assassinated while in Bosnia 
by such conspirators. Austrian papers loudly declared Serbia 
responsible, but a month passed quietly before the Austrian 


1 This cultivated and able German Liberal, wholly free fro m the spirit 
of German jingoism, had been selected for the position apparently in order 
to blind English opinion as to Germany’s warlike aims. When the war 
came, he found himself in disgrace with the Kaiser and the German court; 
and at the opening of the second year of the war (August, 1916) he wrote an 
account of his London mission for 'private circulation among his friends, 
to justify himself in their eyes. A copy fell into the hands of the Allies 
during the next year, and became at once one of the most valuable proofs 
of the German guilt in forcing on the war. 



GERMANY WILLS IT 629 

government took open action. That month, however, was 
used in secret preparation by Germany. Then, July 23, with¬ 
out warning, Austria launched her forty-eight hour ultimatum 
to Serbia — demands that would have degraded that country 
into a mere vassal state, and which, the minutes of the Austrian 
Cabinet show, were purposely made impossible of acceptance. 
The German government supported Austria “to the hilt,” as 
the Kaiser had promised beforehand to do; and in twelve days 
a world-conflagration was ablaze. Two facts regarding the 
negotiations during those days are significant. 

1. Britain persuaded Serbia to offer humble submission 
(reserving only her national independence), and then implored 
Germany to help get Austria’s consent to arbitrate the remain¬ 
ing points. Failing this, Britain pleaded, in vain, that Germany 
herself suggest some plan to preserve peace. Lichnowsky be¬ 
lieved that if his country had wished peace, a settlement could 
easily have been secured, and he “strongly backed” the English 
proposals; but in vain. “We insisted on war,” he says in his 
account to his friends; “ the impression grew that we wanted 
war under any circumstances. It was impossible to interpret 
our attitude in any other way.” At the time, too, the German 
Socialist, Liebknecht, declared : “ The decision rests with William 
II. . . . But the war lords are at work . . . without a qualm 
of conscience ... to bring about a monstrous world war, the 
devastation of Europe” ( Vorwdrts , July 30, 1914). 

2. The German government forced on the war (even when 
Austria for a moment showed hesitation) by a series of ultima¬ 
tums to Russia, France, and Belgium, each justified to the Ger¬ 
man people by glaring falsehoods — which, however, convinced 
them at the time that they must fight in self-defense. 

August 3, German troops invaded Belgium, as the easy road 
to Paris, despite the most solemn treaty obligations to respect 
the neutrality of that land. And the next day Britain “went 
in.” This upset German calculations. Chancellor Bethmann- 
Hollweghad believed that “ shop-keeping ” England would refuse 
to fight, and he expressed bitterly to the English ambassador 


England’s 
efforts to 
keep the 
peace 


Germany 
wills war 











630 


THE WORLD WAR 


his amazement that England should enter the war “just for 
a scrap of paper/’ The irritating consciousness of a blunder 
called forth a frenzy of hate against England — whose overthrow 
in a later war was now openly avowed as the real German goal. 
“God punish England” became the daily greeting among 
the German people. 

For Further Reading on the war and its causes: Gibbons’ New 
Map of Europe, 1911-1914; Loreburn’s How the War Came; Rose’s 
Origins of the War; Spencer’s Our War with Germany; Carlton Hayes’ 
The Great War; A. F. Pollard’s Short History of the Great War. 












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CHAPTER LXIV 





I 



FOUR YEARS OF WAR 

The Germans had planned a short war. They had expected 
(1) to go through Belgium swiftly with little opposition, and 
to take Paris within four weeks ; (2) then to swing their strength 
against Russia before that unwieldy power could get into the 
war effectively, and crush her; and (3) with the Channel forts 
at command, to bring England easily to her knees, if she should 
really take part. 

Thanks to Belgium, the first of these expectations fell through 
— and the others fell with it. The Germans had allowed six 
days to march through Belgium. But for sixteen days little 
Belgium held back mighty Germany. When the French began 
to gather their troops, after August 2, they began it to meet 
an honest attack through Lorraine; but before the Belgians 
were quite crushed, the French contrived to shift enough force 
to the north so that, along with a highly trained “Expedition¬ 
ary Army” of 100,000 from England, they managed to delay 
the advance through northern France for three weeks more — 
ground for which the Germans had allowed eight days. Tre¬ 
mendously outnumbered, outflanked, trampled into the dust 
in a ceaseless series of desperate battles, the thin lines of Allied 
survivors fell back doggedly toward the Marne. There 
September 6, when the boastful invaders were in sight of the 
towers of Paris, the French and English turned at bay in 
a colossal battle along a two-hundred mile front. The Battle 
of the Marne wrecked the German plan. To save them¬ 
selves from destruction the invaders then retreated hastily 
to the line of the Aisne, whence the exhausted Allies failed to 
dislodge them. Both sides “dug in” along a 360-mile front 
from Switzerland to the North Sea. 

631 


German 

plans 


Battle of 
the Marne 









632 


THE WORLD WAR 


Britain’s 
sea power 


A “World 
War ’’ 


German 
success in 
the first two 
years 


While Britain’s first heroic army died devotedly to gain 
their country time, Britain organized herself for war, and 
eventually put into the field a splendid fighting force of four 
million men — a million ready for the second year. From the 
first, too, Britain’s superb navy swept the seas, keeping the 
boastful German dreadnoughts bottled up in the South Baltic, 
and gradually running down the few German raiders that at 
first escaped to prey on British commerce. Except for the 
British navy, Germany must have won the war before the end 
of the second summer. Britain did not enforce her blockade 
of Germany rigidly, in the first months, for fear of offending 
unsettled opinion in America; but America’s resources in food 
and munitions were for the most part closed to Germany, and 
were kept fully available for the Allies. 

Meantime, the war was spreading. Within the first few 
weeks, England’s distant daughter-commonwealths — Canada, 1 
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and even her subject 
India — were rousing themselves nobly to defend their common 
civilization. Japan, England’s ally in the Orient, entered the 
war, too, to seize Germany’s holdings in China and in the north¬ 
ern Pacific. Turkey had openly joined the Teutonic powers; 
and, in the second autumn, Bulgaria did so, hoping to wreak 
vengeance on Serbia for 1913 and to make herself the dominant 
Balkan state. In 1915, too, after driving a hard bargain 
with the Allies in a secret Pact of London, Italy broke away 
from the Triple Alliance and declared war on Austria. 

On the whole, however, the close of the first two years saw 
great gains for Germany. The Russian armies, after gallant 
fighting, betrayed by generals in the field and by a traitorous 
pro-German war office at home, had suffered indescribable 
losses; and Serbia, after heroic resistance, had been wiped from 
the map. Germany now dominated a solid broad belt of terri¬ 
tory from Berlin and Brussels and Warsaw to Bagdad and Persia 

/ t 

1 Among the battles in which our Canadians distinguished themselves 
were the following, in time order: Ypres, Saint-Eloi, Sanctuary Wood, 
La Somme, Vimy Ridge, Paschaendaele Ridge, Amiens, and Cambrai. The 
achievements of our troops were great beyond their number. Their suc¬ 
cessive commanders were Alderson, Byng, and Currie. 



KINGDOM OF 































































PLATE CIV 



Above. — French Infantry in Action near Lorette. The photo shows 
a German shell bursting near the trench. 


Below. — A French Dugout. The photo (taken by flashlight) shows 
exhausted soldiers sleeping, while one, on watch, is writing home. 










NEW WARFARE 


633 


(map, p. 643). True, she began to feel terribly the blockade of 
the British navy. Her stocks of fats, rubber, cotton, and copper 
were running low, and her poorer classes were suffering from 
undernourishment — as was shown by a horrible increase in 
the infant death rate. But the ruling classes felt no pinch, and 
looked hopefully now to the domination of the East to retrieve 
the markets. 

From the first the warfare in the field was marked by new and 
ever more terrible ways of fighting, with increasing ferocity and 
horror from month to month. Ordinary cannon were replaced 
by huge new guns whose high explosives blasted the whole land¬ 
scape into indescribable and irretrievable ruin — burying whole 
battalions alive, and forming great craters where snipers found 
the best shelter in future advances. Ordinary defense works 
were elaborated into many lines of connected trenches, pro¬ 
tected by mazy entanglements of barbed wire ancf strength¬ 
ened at intervals by bomb-proof “ dugouts ” and under¬ 
ground chambers of heavy timbers and cement. To plow 
through these intrenchments, cavalry gave way to monstrous, 
heavily armored motor-tanks. New guns belched deadly poison 
gases, slaying whole regiments in horrible strangling torture 
when the Germans first used this devilish device, and infernal 
“flame-throwers” wrapped whole ranks in liquid fire. Scout¬ 
ing was done, and gunfire directed, by airplanes equipped with 
new apparatus for wireless telegraphy and for photography; 
and daily these aerial scouts, singly or in fleets, met in deadly 
combat ten thousand feet above the ground, — combat that 
ended only when one or both went hurtling down in flames to 
crashing destruction. 

One phase of the war compelled from the first the at¬ 
tention of the world even outside Europe. This was the policy 
of “Frightfulness” deliberately adopted by the German High 
Command. For centuries, international law had been build¬ 
ing up rules of “civilized” war, to protect non-combatants 
and to try to preserve some shreds of humanity even among 


New 

methods of 
warfare 


German 
“ Fright¬ 
fulness ” 






634 


THE WORLD WAR 


America’s 
“ neutral¬ 
ity ” 


the fighters. But the military rulers of Germany, in official 
war manuals, had for years referred to such “moderation” 
as “flabby sentimentality.” 

At the opening of the war, the new German policy was 
put into effect in Western Europe. Belgium and northeastern 
France were purposely devastated, — not by the passionate 
fury of brutalized soldiers, but by deliberate order of polished 
soft-living “gentlemen,” just to break the morale of the enemy, 
to make it easy to hold conquered territory with small forces, 
and to intimidate neighboring small peoples, — Danes and 
Dutch. It was this policy that caused even neutral lands to 
know the German soldier no longer as the kindly “Fritz” but 
as “Hun.” 

To the United States, even more than to France or England, 
the war came as a surprise; and for some time its purposes and 
its origin were obscured by a skillful German propaganda in our 
press. President Wilson issued the usual proclamation of 
neutrality, and followed this with unusual and solemn appeals 
to the American people for a real neutrality of feeling. For 
two years the administration clung to this policy. Any other 
course was made difficult for the President by the fact that 
many members of Congress were either pro-German or at least 
bitterly anti-English. Moreover, the President seems to have 
hoped nobly that if the United States could keep apart from 
the struggle, it might, at the close, render mighty service in 
establishing a lasting world peace. 

True, the best informed men and women saw at once that 
France and England were waging America’s war, against a 
militaristic despotism. Many thousands of young Americans, 
largely college men, made their way to the fighting line as 
volunteers, in the Canadian regiments, in the French “Foreign 
Legion, or in the “air-service”; and hundreds of thousands 
more blushed with shame daily that other and weaker peoples 
should suffer in the common cause while they stood idly by. 
But to other millions the dominant feeling was a deep thank¬ 
fulness that their sons were safe from slaughter, their homes free 
from the horror of war. Vast portions of the American people 




AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 


635 


had neither cared nor known about the facts back of the war: 
to such, that mighty struggle was merely “a bloody European 
squabble.” 

Some leaders, too, in all the great reform movements, believing 
that in any war the attention of the nation must be diverted 
from the pressing need of progress at home, failed to see that 
German militarism and despotism had suddenly towered into 
the one supreme peril to American freedom, and so cast their 
weight for neutrality. And then, cheek by jowl with this mis¬ 
led idealism, there flaunted itself a coarse pro-German senti¬ 
ment wholly un-American. Sons and grandsons of men who 
had fled from Germany to escape despotism were heard now as 
apologists for the most dangerous despotism and the most bar¬ 
barous war methods the modern world had ever seen. Organ¬ 
ized and obedient to the word of command, this element made 
many weak politicians truckle to the fear of “the German vote.” 

Moreover, the country had begun to feel a vast business 
prosperity. The European belligerents were clamoring to buy 
all its spare products at its own prices, — munitions of war, 
food, clothing, raw materials. To be sure, the English navy 
soon shut out Germany from direct trade, though she long 
continued an eager customer, indirectly, through Holland and 
Denmark; but in any case the Allies called ceaselessly for more 
than America produced. Non-employment vanished; wages 
rose by bounds; new fortunes piled up as by Aladdin’s magic. 
A busy people, growing richer and busier day by day, ill- 
informed about the real causes of the war, needed some mighty 
incentive to turn it from the easy, peaceful road of prosperous 
industry into the stern, rugged paths of self-denial and war. 
A little wisdom on Germany’s part, and she might have held 
America bound to neutrality in acts at least, if not always 
in feeling. 

But more and more Germany made neutrality impossible. From 
the first the German government actively stirred up bad feel¬ 
ing toward America among its own people because Americans 
used the usual and legal rights of citizens of a neutral power to 
sell munitions of war to the belligerents. Germany had securely 


Germany 

makes 

neutrality 

difficult 





636 


THE WORLD WAR 


Sale of 
munitions 


The sub¬ 
marine and 
merchant 
ships 


supplied herself in advance, and Britain’s navy now shut her 
out from the trade in any case. So she tried, first by cajolery 
and then by threats, to keep Americans from selling to her 
enemies — which would have left them at her mercy, unprepared 
as they were. The legal right of a neutral to sell munitions 
she could not question. She demanded not that they comply 
with international law, but that they change it in such a way as 
to insure her victory. For the American government to have 
forbidden trade in munitions during the war would have been 
not neutrality, but a direct and deadly act of war against the 
Allies. Worse still, it would have fastened militarism upon 
the world directly. For neutrals to renounce trade in munitions 
(until all such trade is controlled by a world federation) would 
be at once and forever to hand over the world to the nation 
with the largest armaments and munition factories. Very 
properly the American government refused firmly to notice 
these arrogant demands. 

One phase of German frightfulness came home especially 
to America. This was a new and barbarous submarine war¬ 
fare, with its invasion of neutral rights and murder of neutral 
lives. U-craft were not very dangerous to warships when such 
vessels were on their guard. Unarmed merchantmen they could 
destroy almost at will. But if a U-boat summoned a merchant¬ 
man to surrender, the merchantman might possibly sink the 
submarine by one shot from a concealed gun, and in any case 
the U-boat had little room for prisoners. Submarine warfare 
upon merchant ships is necessarily barbarous and in conflict 
with all the principles of international law. If it is to be effi¬ 
cient, the U-boat must sink without warning. In the Ameri¬ 
can Civil War, when the Confederate Alabama destroyed hun¬ 
dreds of Northern merchant ships, it scrupulously cared for 
the safety of the crews and passengers. But from the first the 
German submarines torpedoed English and French peaceful 
merchant ships without notice, so that little chance was given 
even for women and children to get into the lifeboats. Then 
the second year of the war saw a sudden expansion of this hor¬ 
rible form of murder. In February of 1915 Germany pro- 





THE “ LUSITANIA ” 


637 


claimed a “submarine blockade” of the British Isles. She 
drew a broad zone on the high seas and declared that any mer¬ 
chant ships, even those of neutral nations, found within those 
waters, would be sunk without warning. The world still re¬ 
fused to believe that so brutal a threat was seriously meant, 
until, May 7, the great English liner Lusitania was torpedoed 
without any attempt to save life. 

Nearly twelve hundred non-combatants, many of them 
women and children, were drowned, and one hundred and four¬ 
teen of these murdered passengers were American citizens. Now 
indeed from much of America there went up a fierce cry for war; 
but large parts of the country, remote from the seaboard, were 
still indifferent, and shameless apologists were not lacking for 
even this dastardly massacre. President Wilson, still zealous 
for peace, used every resource of diplomacy to induce Germany 
to abandon her horrible submarine methods, — pointing out 
distinctly, at the same time, in his series of four “Lusitania 
Notes” that persistence in that policy would force America 
to fight. The German government answered with quibbles 
and contemptuous neglect. Other merchant vessels were sunk, 
and finally (March, 1916) the sinking of the Sussex, an English 
passenger ship, again involved the murder of American citizens. 
President Wilson’s note to Germany took a still sterner tone 
and specifically declared that one more such act would cause 
him to break off diplomatic relations. Germany now seemed to 
give way. She promised, grudgingly and with loopholes for 
future use, to sink no more passenger or merchant ships — 
unless they should attempt to escape capture — without pro¬ 
viding for the safety of passengers and crews (May 4). This 
episode, running over into the third year, closed the first stage 
of this controversy. President Wilson seemed to have won a 
victory for civilization. As he afterward complained, the pre¬ 
cautions taken by the Germans to save neutrals or non-combat¬ 
ants proved “ distressingly meager,” but for some time “ a cer¬ 
tain degree of restraint was observed.” 

In this interval came the American presidential campaign 


The 

Lusitania 


The Sussex 


Germany 

promises 

amendment 






638 


THE WORLD WAR 


The 

American 
presidential 
election of 
1916 


German 
intrigue in 
neutral 
America 


The danger 
to America 


of 1916. Mr. Wilson drew much strength in the West and with 
the working classes from the fact that he had “ kept us out of 
war,” though at the same time every voter with a German name 
received circular after circular from “ German-American ” so¬ 
cieties urging opposition to him as a foe to “the Fatherland.” 
Neither party really made the war an issue; and Mr. Wilson 
was reelected by a close vote. No sooner had the dust of the 
campaign cleared away than the American people began to find 
indisputable proofs of new treacheries and new attacks by Ger¬ 
many, even within American borders. Official representatives 
of Germany in the United States, protected by their diplomatic 
position, had placed their hirelings as spies and plotters through¬ 
out the land. They had used German money, with the ap¬ 
proval of the German government, to bribe American officials 
and even to “influence” Congress. They had paid public 
speakers to foment distrust and hatred toward the Allies. They 
had hired agitators to stir up strikes and riots in order to para¬ 
lyze industries. Each week brought fresh proof of such out¬ 
rage — more and more frequently, formal proof in the courts 
— and finally President Wilson dismissed the Austrian am¬ 
bassador (who had been directly implicated) and various guilty 
officers connected with the German embassy. 

All this turned attention more and more to the hostility to 
America plainly avowed for years by German leaders. Said the 
Kaiser himself to the American ambassador (October 22, 1915), 
at a time when his government was showing extreme gentle¬ 
ness in calling Germany to account for her murder of peaceful 
American citizens on the high seas: “America had better look 
out. ... I shall stand no nonsense from America after this 
war. Other representative Germans threatened more spe¬ 
cifically that when England had been conquered, Germany, 
unable to indemnify herself in exhausted Europe for her terrible 
expenses, would take that indemnity from the rich and unwar¬ 
like United States. It came home to Americans that their 
security — unprepared for war as they were — was due only 
to the protecting shield of England’s fleet. If Germany came 
out victor from the European struggle, they must give up their 


AMERICA AND GERMANY 


639 


unmilitaristic life, and turn their country permanently into a 
huge camp, on the European model — and there was doubt 
whether time would be given to form such a camp. German 
militaristic despotism and peace for free peoples could not exist in 
the same world. 

Germany now had ready a new fleet of enlarged submarines, 
and she was about to resume her barbarous warfare upon 
neutrals. She knew this might join the United States to her 
foes; but she held Americans impotent in war, believing she 
could keep them busied at home. So, through her ambassador 
at Washington — while he was still enjoying their hospitality — 
she had secretly been trying, as they learned a little later, to get 
Mexico and Japan to join in an attack upon them, promising 
aid and huge portions of their western territory. January 31, the 
German government gave a two weeks’ notice that it was to 
renew its “unrestricted” submarine policy, explaining to its 
own people, with moral callousness, why it had for a time ap¬ 
peared to yield to American pressure — and offering to America 
an insulting privilege of sending one ship a week to England, 
provided it were painted in stripes of certain colors and width, 
and provided it followed a certain narrow ocean lane marked out 
by Germany. President Wilson at once dismissed the German 
ambassador, according to his promise of the preceding March, 
and recalled his ambassador from Berlin. March 12, after a 
number more of American citizens had been murdered at sea, 1 
he placed guards on all merchant vessels. Germany announced 
that such guards if captured would be treated as pirates! 

Now the temper of America was changing swiftly. Apathy 
vanished. Direct and open opposition to war there still was 
from pro-Germans and from extreme pacifists, but the great 

besides the eight American vessels sunk before March, 1916, eight had 
been sunk in the one month from February 3 to March 2, 1917. During 
the two months, February and March, 105 Norwegian vessels were sunk, 
with the loss of 328 lives. By April 3, 1917, according to figures compiled 
by the United States government, 686 neutral vessels had been sunk by 
Germany without counting American ships. When we turn to the still 
more important question of lives, we count up 226 American citizens slain 
by the action of German submarines before April, 1917. Before the close 
of the war, 5000 Norwegian sailors were murdered so. 


Germany 
renews 
“ unre¬ 
stricted ” 
U-boat 
warfare 






640 


THE WORLD WAR 


America 
“ goes in 


America’s 

aims 


The war 
spreads 


majority of the nation roused itself to defend the rights of 
mankind, and turned its eyes confidently to the President 
for a signal. April 2 President Wilson appeared before 
the new Congress, met in special session, to ask it to declare 
that America was now at war with Germany. April 6, by over¬ 
whelming votes, that declaration was adopted. 

America went to war not to avenge slights to its “honor,” 
or merely to protect the property of its citizens, or even merely 
to protect their lives at sea. It did war for these things, but 
more in defense of free government, in defense of civilization, 
in defense of humanity, and in hope of establishing a lasting 
world peace. Said the President’s war message : 

“We are glad . . . to fight for the ultimate peace of the world 
and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people included. 
. . . The world must be made safe for democracy. . . . We 
have no selfish ends. We desire no conquests, no dominion. 
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensa¬ 
tions for the sacrifices we shall freely make. . . . The right 
is more precious than peace; and we shall fight for the things 
which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democ¬ 
racy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have 
a voice in their own governments, for tlje rights and liberties of 
small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert 
of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations.” 

And now the war spread more widely still. Cuba at once 
followed the example of the United States in declaring war 
against Germany, and most of the countries of South and Central 
America either took the same action within a few months or at 
least broke off diplomatic relations with the Central European 
Powers. Portugal had entered the war in 1916, because of her 
alliance with England. China and Siam now joined the Allies. 
None of the new powers except America, however, were to have 
direct effect upon military operations. 

Through 1916 those operations had continued favorable to 
Germany. True, the East front offered two promising surprises 




PLATE CV 



Rheims Cathedral (cf. plate after p. 304) at 6:30a.m., after the second wanton night bombard¬ 
ment by the Germans. The mutilation of this famous structure served no military purpose. 













PLATE CVI 



Above. — Review of French Troops at Moselles. 

Below.— Range-finding. French artillery officers discovering position 
of an enemy battery with the “range-finder,” and telephoning directions 
to their own battery far behind them. A scene in the Argonne forest. 








THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 


641 


an the side of the Allies, but each was followed by swift collapse. 
(1) Russia at first showed remarkable recovery, and in June 
won sweeping successes against the Austrians. By July, how¬ 
ever, her supplies of ammunition had again given out, and she 
was saved from complete overthrow, for the moment, only by 
sacrificing Roumania. (2) For now that country had entered the 
war, to recover from Austria the Roumanian province of Tran¬ 
sylvania. But the Tsar had induced her to go in too soon by 
promises of support that was never given. Bulgarians and 
Teutons entered the doomed country from south and west. 
December 16 the capital fell, and only the rigors of winter en¬ 
abled the Roumanian army to keep a hold upon a narrow strip 
of territory. A large Allied army at Saloniki did not stir, be¬ 
cause if it left its base, it was in peril of being stabbed in the 
back by Constantine of Greece; and the Tsar vetoed all pro¬ 
posals of effective measures against that fellow monarch. 

And, in spite of America’s entry into the war, Germany con¬ 
tinued to win through 1917 also. Russia did drop out. The 
Tsar had fallen under the control of a traitorous German faction 
of the court, which planned a separate peace. Then suddenly 
his ministers maddened the Petrograd populace by permitting 
a serious breakdown in the distribution of food. March 11, 
the populace rose. The troops joined the rioters. Absolutely 
deserted by all classes, Nicholas abdicated on March 15. The 
Liberal leaders of the Duma proclaimed a provisional govern¬ 
ment, which in a few weeks (June, 1917) was replaced by a 
Socialist-Democratic government led by Kerensky, an emotional, 
well-meaning enthusiast, altogether unfit to grapple with the 
tremendous difficulties before Russia. 

Finland, the Ukrainian districts, and Siberia were breaking 
away from central Russia. Everywhere the starving and des¬ 
perate peasants had begun to appropriate the lands of the great 
estates, sometimes quietly, sometimes with violence and out¬ 
rage. Transportation was broken down, and the crude in¬ 
dustrial system was gone. The army was completely demoral¬ 
ized. The peasant soldiers, so often betrayed by their officers, 
were eager for peace. Whole regiments and brigades mutinied, 


Russian 

collapse 


Roumania 

crushed 


The Russian 
Revolution 
of 1917 

Kerensky 






642 


THE WORLD WAR 


The Bolshe- 
viki 


And a sepa¬ 
rate peace 


The Italian 
collapse at 
Caporetto 


murdered their despotic officers, broke up, and went home to get 
their share of land. The remaining army was intoxicated with 
the new political “liberty,” and fraternized with the few Ger¬ 
man regiments left to watch it. During this chaos, real power, 
over nearly all Russia, fell to new councils of workingmen’s 
delegates (with representatives also from the army and the 
peasantry). The Extreme Socialists (Bolsheviki) saw that 
these “soviets,” rather than the old agencies, had become the 
real government, and by shrewd political campaigning they 
captured these bodies. Kerensky fled, and (November 7, 1917) 
the Bolsheviki, led by Nikolai Lenin and Leon Trotsky, seized 
the government, announcing their determination to make peace 
upon the principle of “no indemnities and no annexations.” 
The Allies felt deeply indignant at the “betrayal” of the cause 
of freedom; but it is clear now that no Russian government 
could have continued the struggle. The Russian people had 
borne greater sacrifice than any other; they were absolutely 
without resources; they were unspeakably weary of war; and 
they failed to understand that German victory would mean the 
return of Tsarism. 

The Russian collapse had been caused in part by skillful Ger¬ 
man propaganda among the Russian soldiers that the war was 
the Tsar’s war, or at least a capitalist war, and' that their Ger¬ 
man brothers were ready to give the new Russia a fair peace. 
Now, like tactics were used against the Italians, until their 
military machine, too, went to pieces. Then the Austrians 
suddenly took the offensive. They tore a huge gap in the Ital¬ 
ian lines, took 200,000 prisoners and a great part of Italy’s 
heavy artillery, and advanced into Venetia, driving the remnants 
of the Italian army before them in rout. French and British 
reinforcements were hurried in; and the Teutons proved unable 
to force the Piave River. Italy had not been put out of the war 
as Russia had been; but for the next six months, until well 
into the next year, the most that she could do, even with the 
help of the Allied forces sadly needed elsewhere, was to hold 
her new line. 

On the West front, the Allies took the offensive, but made 




THE U-BOAT FAILURE 


643 


small progress, because now the Germans were able to trans¬ 
fer there their best divisions from the Russian front. The 
brightest phase of the year’s struggle was at the point 
where there had seemed the greatest peril. Germany’s new 
submarine warfare had indeed destroyed an enormous shipping 
tonnage, and for a few months had promised to make good the 



The Mittel-Europa Empire at its greatest extent in March, 1918. In 
Asia, only a few months before it had reached to the Persian Gulf and the 
Red Sea (cf. p. 649). 


threat of starving England mto surrenuer. But an admirable 
English convoy system was organized to protect important 
merchant fleets; shipbuilding was speeded up to supply the 
place of tonnage sunk; submarine chasers and patrol boats 
waged relentless, daring, and successful war against the barbar¬ 
ous craft of the enemy. America sent five battleships to rein¬ 
force the British Grand Fleet and a much more considerable 
addition to the anti-submarine fleet; and newly created Ameri¬ 
can shipyards had begun to launch new cargo ships in ever in- 


Tbe failure 
of the sub¬ 
marine 































644 


THE WORLD WAR 


creasing numbers, upon a scale never before known to the world. 
The Allies were kept supplied with food and other necessaries 
enough to avert any supreme calamity, and before September, 
1917, it had become plain that submarines were not to be the 
decisive factor in the war. 


America 
gets into 
the war 


French dis¬ 
courage¬ 
ment 


A race 
between 
Germany 
and America 


And now America was getting into the struggle more swiftly 
than either friend or foe had dreamed possible. The general ex¬ 
pectation had been that, totally unprepared as the United States 
was, her chief contribution would be in money, ships, and sup¬ 
plies. These she gave in generous measure. But also, from the 
first, the government planned military participation on a huge 
scale. Congress was induced to pass a “selective conscription” 
act; and as early as June a small contingent of excellent fighters 
was sent to France — mainly from the old regular army — 
under the command of General John J. Pershing. In the early 
fall, new regiments were transported (some 300,000 before 
Christmas), and perhaps half a million more were in training. 
Then events made a supreme exertion necessary, and America 
met the need. 

France could stand one year more of war, but she was very 
nearly “bled white,” as Germany had boasted. Her working 
classes were war-weary and discouraged, and the Germans had 
infected all classes in that country more or less successfully with 
their poisonous and baseless propaganda to the effect that Eng¬ 
land was using France to fight her battles, and that she herself 
was bearing far less than her proper share of the burden, French 
morale was in danger of giving way, as Russian and Italian had 
given way. It was saved by two things: by the tremendous 
energy of the aged Clemenceau — “The Tiger” — whom the 
crisis had called to the premiership; and by the appearance in 
France, none too soon, of American soldiers in large numbers. 

Thus in 1918 the war became a race between Germany and 
America. Could America put decisive numbers in action on 
the West front before Germany could deliver a knock-out 
blow ? The German war lords thought not. The Allies, they 
insisted, had not enough shipping to bring Americans in large 


THE AMERICANS ARRIVE 


645 


numbers with the necessary supplies; and then the Americans 
“couldn’t fight” without years of training ! But while winter 
held the German armies inactive, the British and Amer¬ 
ican navies carried each week thousands of American 
soldiers to France. And during these same months America 
and England won a supremely important victory in the moral 
field. Austria, now under a new emperor, suggested peace nego¬ 
tiations in a conciliatory note —- possibly hoping also to weaken 
Allied morale. Instead, in two great speeches, Premier Lloyd 
George and President Wilson stated the war aims of the Allies 
with a studious moderation which conciliated wavering elements 
in their own countries, and at the same time with a keen logic 
that put Germany in the wrong even more clearly than before 
in the eyes of the world and drove deeper the wedge between 
the German government and the German people. Lloyd George 
(January 6, 1918) demanded complete reparation for Belgium, 
but disclaimed intention to exact indemnities other than 'payment 
for injuries done by Germany in defiance of international law. 
President Wilson had already declared that there could be no 
safe peace with the faithless Honenzollern government; and 
now his address contained his famous Fourteen Points, which 
were soon accepted apparently throughout the Allied world as a 
charter of a coming world peace. The more important of these 
were as follows: 

1. “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at; after which, diplo¬ 
macy shall proceed always ... in the public view.” ... 3. Removal, 
so far as possible, of economic barriers. 4. Disarmament by inter¬ 
national action. 5. An “absolutely impartial adjustment of all co¬ 
lonial claims . . . the interests of peoples concerned to have equal 
weight with the equitable claim of the government whose title is to 
be determined.” 6. Evacuation of all Russian territory, and . . . 
“a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions 
of her own choosing, [withj assistance also of every kind that she may 
herself desire.” 7. Evacuation and restoration of Belgium. 8. Rep¬ 
aration for devastation in France, and return of Alsace-Lorraine. 
9. “Readjustment of the frontiers of Italy . . . along clearly recognizable 
lines of nationality .” ... 11. Serbia to be given a free and secure access 
to the sea; and the relations of the Balkan states to be “determined 
by friendly council along clearly recognizable lines of allegiance and na- 


The 

“ Fourteen 
Points ” 






646 


THE WORLD WAR 


Brest- 

Litovsk 


The last 
German 
offensive 


tionality.” 13. A free Poland (with access to the sea), “to include 
the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations.” 14. A 
“general association of nations” under specific covenants. 

The significance of the Fourteen Points lay even more in their 
spirit than in these detailed provisions. “ We have no jealousy 
of German greatness,” concluded this great utterance, “ and there 
is nothing in this program that impairs it. We do not wish to 
fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade, 
if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace- 
loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and 
fair dealing.” 

And now Germany herself made plain how absolutely right 
the Allies were in their contention that the Hohenzollerns could 
be trusted to keep no promises. March 3, 1918, the German 
militarists, with the grossest of bad faith, shamelessly broke 
their many pledges to the helpless Bolsheviki and forced upon 
Russia the “Peace of Brest-Litovsk.” By that dictated treaty, 
Germany virtually became overlord to a broad belt of vassal 
states taken from Russia — Finland, the Baltic Provinces, 
Lithuania, Poland, Ukrainia — and even the remaining “ Great 
Russia” had to agree to German control of her industrial re¬ 
organization. When the German perfidy had revealed itself 
suddenly, after long and deceitful negotiations, the angered and 
betrayed Bolsheviki threatened to renew the war. They were 
absolutely helpless, however, without prompt Allied aid upon 
a large scale. This aid they asked for, but urgent cablegrams 
brought no answer. The Allies apparently had been so repelled 
by the Bolshevist industrial and political policy that they were 
unwilling to deal with that government, and preferred to leave 
Russia to its fate — and to the Germans. 

Naturally the Germans opened the campaigns in the West 
at the earliest moment possible. They had now a vast su¬ 
periority both in men and in heavy guns there. March 21 
they attacked the British lines in Picardy with overwhelming 
forces. After five days of terrific fighting the British were 
hurled out of their trench lines and driven back with frightful 
losses nearly to Amiens, leaving a broad and dangerous gap 


« 


PLATE CVII 




























Zeebrugge 

OstencL<%% 


Antwerp 


Louvain 


Pournai" 

■<y///////// A 


Namur M®, 


Mons 


Bethune 


Coblence 


ouai 


.ubeuge 


paume; 


AnJiens% 


Eeronne 

ontdi.lie. 


luentji: 


LUXEMIiUUCJ 

\ 

jLuxembur 


Noyon 


Longwy 


Compiegne 


NRheims A 

■W.QOO±^-' " 

Chateau 
Thierry vj/ 


Verdun A. 
Mars la Tourcx 

St.Mihiel 


(Metz’? 


Saarburg 


Epinal 


German Lines on July 15 and November 10 , 1918 . 















LAST GERMAN OFFENSIVE 


647 



between them and the French. But the Germans had ex¬ 
hausted themselves in their mass attack; and, while they 
paused, a French force threw itself into the gap, and British 
reserves reinforced the shattered front lines. 

For the first time since the First Battle of the Marne, the Ger¬ 
mans had forced the fighting on the West front into the open. In 
April they struck again far¬ 
ther north, in Flanders, and 
again they seemed almost 
to have overwhelmed the 
British. But, fighting des¬ 
perately, “with our backs 
to the wall,” as Haig 
phrased it in his solemn 
order to his heroic army, 
and reinforced by some 
French divisions, the Brit¬ 
ish kept their front un¬ 
broken, bent and thinned 
though it was. After 
another month of prepara¬ 
tion, the Germans struck 
fiercely in a general attack 
on the French lines north 
of the Aisne, and, breaking 
through for the moment on 
an eighteen-mile front, once 
more reached the Marne. 

Here, however, they were halted, largely by American troops, 
at Chateau-Thierry. Then, while the Americans made splen¬ 
did counter-attacks, as at Belleau Wood (renamed, for them, 
“Wood of the Marines”), the French lines were reformed, so 
that the Allies still presented a continuous front, irregular though 
it was with dangerous salients and wedges. At almost the 
same time, Austria, forced into action again in Italy by German 
insistence, was repulsed in a general attack on the Piave. 

Time was fighting for the Allies. Disasters had at last in- 


General Haig, who succeeded to 
British command in 1916. 


the 


Chateau- 

Thierry 





648 


THE WORLD WAR 


Ferdinand 

Foch 


The Ameri 
cans arrive 


Foch’s 

offensive 


St. Mihiel 


duced them to appoint a generalissimo. This position was 
given to Ferdinand Foch, who, though then a subordinate, 
had been the real hero of the First Marne. For the rest of 
the struggle, the Allied forces were directed with a unity and 
skill that had been impossible under divided commands. 

And now, too, America really had an army in France. Be¬ 
fore the end of June, her effective soldiers there numbered 
1,250,000. Each month afterward brought at least 300,000 
more. By September the number exceeded two millions, with 
a million more already training in America. The Germans 
could not again take up the offensive for five weeks (June 11- 
July 15), and in this interval the balance of available man-power 
turned against them. July 15, they attacked again in great 
force along the Marne, but this onset broke against a stone-wall 
resistance of French and American troops. For the first time 
in the war, a carefully prepared German offensive failed to gain. 

The failure was plain by the 17th. On the 18th, before 
the Germans could withdraw or reorganize, Foch began his 
great offensive, by counter-attacking upon the exposed west¬ 
ern flank of the invaders. This move took the Germans com¬ 
pletely by surprise. Their front all but collapsed along a critical 
line of twenty-eight miles. Foch allowed them no hour of rest. 
Unlike his opponents, he did not attempt gigantic attacks, 
to break through at some one point. Instead, he kept up a 
continuous offensive, threatening every part of the enemy’s 
front, but striking now here, now there, on one exposed flank 
and then on another, always ready at a moment to take ad¬ 
vantage of a new opening, and giving the enemy no chance to 
withdraw their forces without imperiling key positions. Before 
the end of August 1 the Allies had won back all the ground lost 
in the spring. The Germans had made their last throw — and 
lost. Foch’s pressure never relaxed. In September American 
divisions on the south end of the front won back St. Mihiel in 
bloody fighting. At the same time the British toward the 
north were wrenching great sections of the boasted “Hinden- 

1 August 8—9 the Canadian Corps formed the “ spearhead ” of Haig’s 
great offensive in front of Amiens. 



PLATE CVIII 



Captured German Guns exhibited in Paris in 1919 . 














































PLATE CIX 



Surrender of the German Fleet after the Ahmistice 






THE GERMAN COLLAPSE 


649 


burg Line ” 1 from the foe. In the opening days of October the 
German commanders reported to Berlin that the war was lost. 

This result was determined largely by events in the East. 
Now that there was no Tsar to interfere, the English and French 
had deposed and ban¬ 
ished King Constantine 
of Greece ; and Venizelos, 
the new head of the 
Greek state, was warmly 
committed to the Allied 
cause. In September, the 
Allied force, so long held 
inactive at Saloniki, sud¬ 
denly took the offensive, 
crushing the Bulgarians 
in a great battle on the 
Vardar; and Bulgaria’s 
surrender opened the 
way for an attack upon 
Austria from the south. 

The preceding year a small British expedition from India 
had worked its way up the Tigris to Bagdad ; and another from 
Egypt had taken Jerusalem. Now this last army had finally 
been reinforced, and in September, in a brilliant campaign, it 
occupied Syria and forced Turkey to make abject submission. 
Austria, too, had dissolved. Bohemia on one side, and Slovenes, 
Croats, and Bosnians on the other, were organizing inde¬ 
pendent governments — with encouragement from America and 
the Allies. Then, October 24, Italy struck on the Piave. The 
Austrian army broke in rout. Austria was granted an armistice 
(November 4) and the ancient Hapsburg Empire vanished. 

Germany had begun to treat for surrender a month earlier, 
but held out a week longer. October 5, the German Chancellor 
(now the liberal Prince Max of Baden, who had been a severe 
critic of Germany’s war policy) had asked President Wilson 

1 The Canadians captured the formidable Drocourt-Qu6ant Switch, 
September 2. 



Victories 
in the East 








650 


THE WORLD WAR 


Fall of 
Germany 


November 
ii , 1918 


to arrange an armistice, offering to accept the Fourteen Points 
as a basis for peace. The reply made it plain once more 
that America and the Allies would not treat with the old des¬ 
potic government, and that no armistice would be granted at 
that late moment which did not secure to the Allies fully the 
fruits of their military advantages in the field. Meantime the 
fighting went on, with terrific losses on both sides. The French 
and Americans, pushing north in the Argonne and across the 
Meuse, were threatening the trunk railway at Sedan, the only 
road open for German retreat except the one through Belgium. 
The British and Belgians pushed the discouraged invaders out 
of northern France and out of a large part of Belgium. The 
pursuit at every point was so hot that retreat had to be foot 
by foot, or in complete rout. As a last desperate throw, the 
German war lords ordered the Kiel fleet to sea, to engage the 
British navy; but the common sailors, long on the verge of 
mutiny, broke into open revolt, while everywhere the Extreme 
Socialists were openly preparing revolution. 

Late in October the War Council of the Allies made known 
to Germany the terms upon which she could have an armistice 
preliminary to the drafting of a peace treaty. Germany could 
save her army from destruction, and her territory would not 
suffer hostile conquest. But she was to surrender at once 
Alsace-Lorraine, and withdraw her troops everywhere across 
the Rhine, leaving the Allies in possession of a broad belt of 
German territory. She was to surrender practically all her 
fleet, most of her heavy artillery, her aircraft, and her railway 
engines. Likewise she was at once to release all prisoners, 
though her own were to remain in the hands of the Allies. No¬ 
vember 11, Germany made this surrender to whatever further 
conditions the Allies might impose in the final settlement — 
though they did pledge themselves to base their terms, with 
certain reservations, upon Mr. Wilson’s Fourteen Points. 

Germany had already collapsed internally. November 7, 
Bavaria deposed her king and proclaimed herself a republic. 
In Berlin the Moderate Socialists seized the government. State 
after state followed. November 9, the Kaiser fled to Holland, 
whence he soon sent his formal abdication. 



CHAPTER LXV 


SINCE THE WAR 


January 18, 1919, the Peace Congress met at Versailles to 
reconstruct Europe. There was supreme need. In Germany a 
National Assembly (elected by true universal suffrage, male 
and female) had set up a federal republic. The new govern¬ 
ment was in the control of a union of “Moderate Socialists” and 
“German Democrats” (the old Liberals); but it had to main 
tain itself precariously against revolts of “Extreme Socialists” 
of the Bolshevist type, while from the opposite side it was 
threatened with aristocratic army-officer plots for monarchic 
restoration. 

Hungary for a time had tried a liberal republican government. 
But the Allied blockade, stupidly continued, made work and food 
scarce, so that the starving populace soon set up a Bolshevist 
rule. (A little later, it may be added here, two more revolu 
tions, secretly backed by the Allied Council at Paris, had re¬ 
placed this government, first by a Moderate Socialist govern¬ 
ment and then by a reactionary army-officer government which 
is republican in little but name.) Meantime Roumania had 
taken advantage of Hungary’s woes to declare war; and the 
Roumanian army had ravaged the country for months as sav¬ 
agely as ever Germany did Belgium, even after Hungary had 
assented to all Roumania’s demands for cessions of territory. 

Bohemia , enlarged by the addition of Moravia, had become 
Czechoslovakia. This republic has so far been the most stable 
and promising of the new states in Central Europe; but at the 
time it was distracted by conflicts with Germany, with Austria, 
and with Poland, over conflicting boundary claims. That 
new Republic of Poland, too, had other contests, bordering on 
war, upon her remaining frontiers—with Russian Bolshevists 

651 


Danger of 
anarchy in 
Central 
Europe 


The Ger¬ 
man Re¬ 
public 


Hungary 


Czecho¬ 

slovakia 


New Baltic 
States 







652 


SINCE THE WAR 


and with Germany — besides being torn with internal faction 
and with peasant massacres of her Jews. Like anarchy, rising 
into civil wars, held sway in every other of the chain of border 
states that had split off from Russia, — Finland, Esthonia, 
Latvia, Courland, Lithuania, TJkrainia. 

Jugo-slavia Further to the south, Serbia had become Jugoslavia, by the 



Central Europe in 1919. 

long-sought union with Bosnia, Slavonia, and Croatia; but 
that still inharmonious state was in daily peril of war with Italy 
over the Adriatic coast, with some actual armed clashes. And 
Italy was at daggers drawn with Greece over southern Albania, 
the islands of the Aegean, and the coasts of Asia Minor. 

Each country felt, with too much reason, that the more it 
could lay hands on before the settlement, the more it would 






THE PEACE CONGRESS 


653 


finally keep, and so sought to grab as much as possible in the 
interval. Still more serious than this political chaos was the 
demoralization of industry. Millions of disbanded soldiers 
were returning to their homes, after years of trench life, to find 
neither work nor food. Lack of shipping made it a slow process 
to bring into Central Europe the raw materials needed to start 
the factory wheels again and to replace the machinery worn 
out during the long Allied blockade. Over wide areas, idle 
multitudes were suffering from insufficient food ; and this distress 
was the harder to bear because in every country thousands of 
war-profiteers were spending their shameful riches in insolent 
waste. 

The Peace Congress was made up of delegations from the 
twenty-three Allied governments, with five more from Britain’s 
Dominions — Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zea¬ 
land, and India. Each country’s delegation had one vote. 
Countries that had been neutral were invited to send represent¬ 
atives to be called in upon special matters that might concern 
them. Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Russia were 
allowed no representation. 

President Wilson headed the American delegation; Lloyd 
George and Orlando, the English and Italian premiers, rep¬ 
resented their countries; and Clemenceau, head of the French 
delegation, was naturally chosen president of the assembly. 
These leaders made up the “Big Four,” and part of the time 
this inner circle became the “Big Five” by the inclusion of the 
Japanese representative. 

From the first there were critical differences within the “ Big 
Four.” Mr. Wilson had promised the world, Germany included , 
“a permanent peace based on unselfish, tinbiased justice, and 
“ a new international order based upon broad universal principles 
of right.” Lloyd George was inclined to sympathy with such 
a program; but he was sadly hampered in action, because, in 
the parliamentary elections just before, he had won by appeal¬ 
ing to the strong war passions of the English people. The other 
leaders thought President Wilson, in Clemenceau’s words. 


Industrial 

demoral¬ 

ization 


The Peace 
Congress 


The “ Big 
Four” 


Woodrow 

Wilson 






Weakened 
by events 
in America 



654 THE PEACE CONGRESS 

merely a benevolent dreamer of Utopias, and they preferred to 
rest rearrangements upon the old methods of rival alliances 
and armed camps, to maintain a balance of power — a plan which 
bloody centuries had proved a seed bed of war. 

By the war-weary peoples of Europe, however, the Wilson 
program was at first hailed with joy. While the diplomats were 


“ The Big Four.” — Lloyd George, Orlando, Clemenceau, Wilson. 

skillfully delaying the meeting of the assembly, he journeyed 
through England, France, and Italy, received everywhere by 
the working masses with striking demonstrations as “ the presi¬ 
dent of all of us, ” the apostle of world peace and human brother¬ 
hood. For a time it looked as though he might at a pinch 
override the hostile attitude of the governments by appealing 
over their heads to the peoples themselves; and in a great 
speech at Milan, just after slurring attacks upon him by French 
statesmen, he hinted forcefully at such a possibility. 

But as months passed in wearisome negotiations, old ani¬ 
mosities began to show in each nation toward neighboring 
peoples, until this chance for generous unanimity was lost. 
Moreover, Mr. Wilson had been seriously weakened by events 


















THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 


655 


at home. Late in the campaign for Congressional elections in 
the preceding November, he had made an unfortunate appeal 
for indorsement of his policies by a Democratic victory. In¬ 
stead, the elections gave both Houses to the Republicans; and 
the jubilant and vengeful victors at once entered upon a course 
of bitter criticism and obstruction — of which Mr. Wilson’s 
European opponents took shrewd advantage to weaken his 
influence at Paris. 

In spite of Mr. Wilson’s declaration for open negotiations 
(p. 645) the European statesmen, with their traditions of diplo¬ 
matic intrigue, carried the point for only occasional full and pub¬ 
lic meetings. Meantime all important matters were settled 
by the inner circle in secret conclave, so that the six public 
meetings of the Congress (up to July) were called merely for 
formal ratification of conclusions already arrived at by the “ Rig 
Four.” 

To offset this disappointment, Mr. Wilson seemed for a while 
to have won a splendid victory for a “League of Nations.” 
Three months before America entered the war (January 22, 
1917), as his last peace effort, he had read to the American 
Congress a notable address proposing a League of Nations to 
enforce peace, — a peace made by free peoples (among whom 
the small nations should have their full voice), secured “by 
the organized major force of mankind.” This address itself 
was one of the mighty events in history. Individuals had 
dreamed sometimes of a world organization for peace and prog¬ 
ress ; but then for the first time did an authorized spokesman 
of a great nation bring that idea into the realm of practical 
statesmanship. Now Mr. Wilson felt unhesitatingly that the 
building of such a world league was the most important work 
of the Versailles Congress — and indeed a necessary prelude 
to any peace other than one of vengeance and booty. 

In March, after some weeks of consideration, a committee 
headed by Mr. Wilson made public a League covenant (constitu¬ 
tion) it had prepared. After sharp criticism in the United 
States Senate, this constitution was slightly modified, and then 


Secret 

negotiation 


Covenant 
“or a League 
of Nations 






656 


THE PEACE CONGRESS 


The Ger¬ 
man treaty 


adopted by the Peace Congress. The union is very loose, and its 
managing bodies are not really a government. Charter member¬ 
ship was offered to forty-five nations, — all the then organized 
governments in the world except Russia, the four “enemy 
countries,” and Costa Rica, San Domingo, and Mexico. 
Admission of new members, and other amendments, require 
the unanimous consent of England, France, Italy, and Japan 
(and the five elected members of the council), together with a 
majority vote of all states; and for any other action of conse¬ 
quence the consent of all nations is demanded, except that no 
party to a dispute has a voice in its settlement. Wise provisions 
prohibit secret treaties in future, and seek to provide for dis¬ 
armament (though only by unanimous consent), for regulation 
of manufacture of munitions, for compulsory arbitration, and for 
delay in recourse to war even if an arbitration is unsatisfactory. 

Meantime the French delegation, frankly skeptical as to the 
value of this League, had devoted itself to securing treaties of 
peace that should render Germany powerless to attack France 
again. Germany protested in vain against the rigor of the 
terms, but June 28 her helpless delegates (summoned to Ver¬ 
sailles for the purpose) signed the dictated treaty. The docu¬ 
ment would fill nearly half of this volume. Its main provi¬ 
sions, with those of subsequent treaties with the other “enemy 
countries,” may be summarized briefly : — 

Germany’s military power was destroyed. Her navy was 
limited for the future to six battleships and six light cruisers, 
with no submarines; and her army is not to exceed 100,000 
men — with a careful restriction, too, upon her manufacture 
of munitions. 

Germany’s old colonial empire was turned over to Britain , 
France , and Japan, in accordance with a secret treaty under 
which Japan had entered the war. (This division of plunder 
was formally justified under a theory that Britain and her allies 
were to be mere “mandatories” for the League of Nations, 
holding these backward districts as “ a sacred trust for civiliza¬ 
tion.” At the first session of the League Assembly, in Novem¬ 
ber of 1920, some of the small nations desired to establish rules 


THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE 


657 


for that “trusteeship” ; but the British representative declared 
flatly that no action there taken could “limit the freedom of 
action of his government.” Moreover, Shantung with its forty 
million people remained in Japan’s hands, without even the 
pretext of a “mandate,” in spite of the vigorous protest of 
China. This wrong was righted at the Washington Conference. 

Germany lost a fifth of her territory and population in Europe , 
with her most valuable coal deposits. She not only returned 
Danish Sleswig 1 to Denmark and Alsace-Lorraine to France, 
but also ceded three small areas to Belgium, and to Poland not 
merely her old Polish districts but also large strips of distinctly 
German territory in Upper Silesia and east of the Vistula. 

Moreover, to give Poland easy access to the sea, German Dant- 
zig became a “free” city (against its will), with roundabout 
provisions that leave it really subject to Poland. Likewise, by 
industrial occupation, France has possibly acquired the Saar val¬ 
ley, east of Alsace, with a solid German population. 2 

The dismembered Austrian Empire, besides the territorial se- The Ac¬ 
cessions already noted (p. 651), very properly ceded Galicia tnan treaty 
to Poland, Transylvania to Roumania, and Trieste and the 
Trentino to Italy ; but, in connection with this last cession 
in order to provide Italy with a needless “strategic frontier” 
against Austria, that enfeebled country was compelled to cede 
also a strip of strictly German territory (the Brenner Pass in 
the Alps) with a quarter of a million of German people. In 
these ways, Hungary was reduced to about one third its former 

1 Sleswig determined its own fate (as the treaty had provided) by plebi¬ 
scites. Denmark showed an honorable and wise desire to annex only such 
districts as desired it, and readily acquiesced in the retention of two thirds 
of the old duchy by Germany. Parts of Upper Silesia were also to have 
settled their own fate; but the plebiscite results were so perplexing that 
the final settlement had to be intrusted to a League of Nations com¬ 
mission. 

2 The treaty very properly gave France the Saar coal mines for fifteen 
years (under the control of an international commission dominated by 
France), in return for Germany’s wanton ruin of French mines ; but besides 
this, it also provided that at the end of that time France should confiscate 
the mines absolutely unless Germany should then pay at once their full 
value. Other provisions of the treaty made it very probable that Ger¬ 
many would be unable to do that. 









Minor 

treaties 


The Ger¬ 
man indem¬ 
nity 


658 THE PEACE TREATIES 

size; and German Austria is left a petty state of 7,000,000 people 
grouped about Vienna (“a capital without a country”) shut 
off from the sea, with its old markets and mines all gone and 
with little agricultural land. (This Austria has dragged out 
the years since the treaty in cruel starvation meagerly relieved 
by Allied charity. The land can raise at best only a sixth of 
its necessary food, and it has practically no other industrial 
resources. The people naturally desire incorporation into Ger¬ 
many ; but, at French insistence, the Peace Congress forbade 
this very natural application of the promised principle of “ self- 
determination ” because it might strengthen Germany.) 

In the complex Balkan readjustments, it was found difficult to 
follow the promised “lines of nationality”; but Greece and 
Serbia were given new territory on the north Aegean coast at 
the expense of Bulgaria — which was now shut off from the sea 
except by the route of the Danube. 

“ Turkey ” was reduced to Asia Minor, although Constantinople 
and “the Zone of the Straits” were also left in Turkish posses¬ 
sion subject to the control of an international commission and 
open to ships of all nations. Armenia and Arabia (the Kingdom 
of Hejaz) were declared independent states. Smyrna went to 
Greece; most of the Aegean islands to Italy; Syria (as man¬ 
dated territory), to France ; and Mesopotamia in like manner to 
Britain. (In the main this arrangement was a frank surrender 
to commercial imperialism, French and English; and these 
“protectors” of Mesopotamia and Syria have been compelled 
to maintain their authority even by bloodshed. As a by¬ 
product of these arrangements, too, and of the collapse of 
Russia, British imperialism for a time secured control of Persia. 
Moreover, in 1921, dissatisfied Greece went to war with Turkey 
for more conquest in Asia Minor.) It should be added that, 
to the chagrin of the Arabs then in possession, Palestine was 
set aside, as a British “mandate,” for a home for a restored 
Jewish state — if Jews should return there in sufficient numbers. 

Most troublesome of all was the question of the money “ repara¬ 
tions'’ to be paid by Germany. That country was required to 
pay at once some five billions of dollars in gold and in goods 



PLATE CX 




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PLATE CXI 



Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

Lloyd George and Aristide Briand (the French premier) in conference at 
Cannes m August, 1921. After the close of the Peace Congress in the 
fall of 1919, the real government of Europe lay in a “Supreme Council” 
holding frequent sessions and made up of representatives of the leading 
European “Allies.” The premiers of France and England were “the 

vu W °i 9<T cil throu S h 1920-1921. Lloyd George, responding 

to liberal English feeling, soon showed a desire to adopt a gentler policy 
toward Germany. Toward the close, Briand was beginning to incline 
slightly in the same direction; but this so offended the anti-German feel- 
mg m the French Chamber that he was obliged to resign. 
























THE GERMAN INDEMNITY 659 

(all then available), besides promising to supply many millions of 
tons of coal each year for ten years to Belgium, Italy, and France 
(in addition to the Saar arrangement). Further payments 
were left to be fixed by an Allied commission when it should 
be better known what the damages were and how much it would 
be possible to pay; and for fifteen years from 1919 a French 
army was to occupy the German districts west of the Rhine. 
France showed strong inclination to keep the total indemnity 
indefinite as long as possible, taking meanwhile from time to 
time what little could be found; but Lloyd George and English 
public feeling gradually swung over to the opinion that German 
industry could not be expected to revive with its neck in a per¬ 
petually strangling noose; and in February of 1921 the Com¬ 
mission fixed the total indemnity at about 132 billions of gold 
marks, to be paid in installments over forty years. Germany 
protested that this was an impossible sum, and many experts 
in the Allied countries declared it to be three or four times more 
than Germany could pay; but France advanced her army of 
occupation farther into German territory, wishing apparently 
to retain such territory until she should secure the money 
reparation. By selling paper money to foreign speculators 
(mainly American), Germany then did secure gold enough for 
the first two installments; 1 but that currency depreciated to 
almost nothing, so that this process cannot be repeated ; and at 
this writing (April, 1923) the German indemnity remains a 
chief cause of world demoralization. 

England and the United States formerly sold vast quantities of 
goods to Germany. Germany now has no wealth with which to buy 
the products of English and American factories and of American 
farms. Moreover, if Germany is to pay any further indemnity, 
she must get the gold by exporting factory goods. To do that she 
must undersell English and American factories in some market (to 
the still greater demoralization of the trade of those countries). 
Therefore the Allies insisted that Germany must place a heavy 
export tax upon her own goods. This makes it difficult for her to 
undersell England — but it also makes it well-nigh impossible 

1 Belgium held a priority claim on these. 


And world 
trade 





660 


THE PEACE TREATIES 


The secret 
treaties 


Criticism 
of the Ver¬ 
sailles 
treaty 


for her to get gold wherewith to pay indemnities. The world 
is slowly discovering that, under the delicate adjustments of 
modern trade relations, it is not an easy thing to take a huge 
indemnity in money from one country without injuring many 
other countries. 

Many of the objectionable features in the treaties were due 
to the secret bargains for division of spoils by which the Allies 
had bought the aid of Japan and Italy. When the Congress 
met, those bargains were not generally known; but it soon be¬ 
came clear that they would prevent a peace closely in accord 
with the Fourteen Points. For a time Mr. Wilson stood out 
against the Congress becoming “ a Congress for booty ”; and 
once (when Orlando insisted that Italy should have Croatian 
Fiume, the natural Adriatic door for Jugoslavia) he even cabled 
to America for his ship. This extreme threat prevented that 
particular act of plunder — though Orlando and Sonnino 1 were 
so incensed that they left the Congress; and in the end Mr. 
Wilson was reconciled to the treaty. 

As soon as the treaty with Germany was made public, how¬ 
ever, it was denounced vehemently by many earnest thinkers in 
all lands. Indeed some of the experts attached to the American 
delegation had already resigned in protest; and Jan Smuts, 
South Africa’s soldier-statesman, declared in a formal statement 
that he signed for his country only because peace must be made 
at once and because he hoped that the worst features of the 
treaty might be modified later by the League of Nations. Such 
criticism had little or nothing to do with sympathy for Germany. 
It was based upon the conviction that the treaty was dishonor¬ 
able to the victors, inasmuch as it broke faith with a defence¬ 
less foe after surrender, and that it would breed future wars — 
and so broke faith even more fatally with hundreds of thousands 
of splendid youth who gave their lives, in long torment and suf¬ 
fering, to “win a war that should end war.” At the same time 
the severest critic must confess that the new world map made 
at Versailles is at least a tremendous advance over the old map 
of 1914, with political divisions drawn far more according to the 
1 Italy’s famous minister for foreign affairs. 



































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AMERICA AND THE LEAGUE 


661 


reasonable and natural lines of race and language and popular 
desires. 

In America there was much opposition to joining the League 
of Nations. President Wilson’s influence finally rallied the 
Democratic Senators in favor of ratification of the Covenant 
without modification. With equal unanimity, the Republi¬ 
cans opposed it — but upon two widely different grounds. A 
small section declared that for America to join any such “ super¬ 
government” would sacrifice her sovereign independence; that 
she was able to take care of herself, and should let the rest 
of the world look after itself. A much larger group objected 
to particular features of this Covenant, but agreed that it was 
no longer possible for America to hold aloof from Europe. Said 
Ex-President Taft: 

“The argument that to enter this covenant is a departure from the 
time-honored policy of avoiding ‘entangling alliances’ is an argu¬ 
ment that is blind to changing conditions. . . . The war ended that 
policy. ... It was impossible for us to maintain the theory of an iso¬ 
lation which did not exist in fact. It will be equally impossible for us 
to keep out of another general European war. We are just as much 
interested in preventing such a war as if we were in Europe.” 

Republican Senators, representing this view, added to the 
covenant certain amendments, with which they were willing 
to ratify. President Wilson claimed that such amendments 
■would make ratification invalid; and against his influence the 
Republicans could not muster the necessary two thirds vote in 
the Senate. The Democrats failed likewise to secure the 
necessary votes for ratification in the original form. While 
touring the country to arouse support for the covenant, Presi¬ 
dent Wilson suffered a distressing physical breakdown, and the 
whole question hung fire for many months. In 1920, the Presi¬ 
dent hoped to make the election of his successor a “ solemn ref¬ 
erendum” upon the matter. As usual in American politics, 
too many other questions eintered into the campaign to leave 
any one issue absolutely clear cut; but the Republican ‘ land¬ 
slide” victory shelved any probability of the United States 
entering the League for years to come. 


The United 
States re¬ 
fuses to 
enter the 
league 







662 


BOLSHEVIST RUSSIA 


Bolshevist 

Russia 


The soviet 
system 


The League has accomplished much useful work in settling 
minor European differences, and it has admitted several new 
members, e.g., Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Turkey, Costa Rica, 
and Egypt; but the absence of the United States (now the 
most powerful and richest country in the world) seriously handi¬ 
caps its usefulness, — especially as Germany and Russia are 
still excluded. It is far from being a world organization. 

Another disturbing factor in the slow return of world progress, 
which the Peace Congress did little to help, was Bolshevist 
Russia. After the fall of the Tsar, society in Russia collapsed. 
Criminals, singly or in bands, worked their will, unchecked 
by any government, in robbery, outrage, and murder, not only 
in country districts but even in the public streets of great cities. 
The cities were starving; and speculators were increasing 
the agony by hoarding supplies to sell secretly to the rich at 
huge profits. Foreign papers, especially in their cartoons, 
ascribed all this to the Bolshevists — who in reality put it down in 
many districts. Kerensky had proved utterly unable to grapple 
with the situation; but when the Bolshevists came to power, 
they shot the bandits in batches, and meted out like swift punish¬ 
ment to “ forestalled ” of food. In such summary proceedings, 
many innocent persons suffered along with the guilty; but at 
least Russia was saved from reverting to savagery. Gradually 
order and quiet were restored; and the available food was “ ra¬ 
tioned” rigidly, the Bolshevists taking particular care of chil¬ 
dren of all classes. 

The Bolshevists claimed to give political citizenship to all 
useful workers including teachers, actors, physicians, en¬ 
gineers, and industrial managers, but excluding the idle (rich 
or poor) along with bankers and lawyers, for which classes their 
society has no place. Their governing bodies represent, not 
individual citizens (as our Western governments do), but the 
different kinds of industries. In each “district,” there is a 
shoemakers’ union, a teachers’ union, and so on. Each 
such union chooses delegates to the soviet (p. 592) of the dis¬ 
trict. These district soviets are local governments; and further 




FREE SPEECH SUPPRESSED 


663 


all of them within a given province send delegates to a higher 
“provincial soviet.” Delegates from the various provincial 
soviets make up the central and supreme soviet at Petrograd. 
(All delegates are subject to recall at any time by the bodies that 
elected them.) 

For the first time in history on a large scale, this government 
at once put into actual operation an extreme kind of socialism, 
along with the confiscation of most private property. This 
alarmed the propertied classes everywhere. 1 The Allies at 
Paris did not think it safe to let the Bolshevist system work 
out its own failure, but, fearing its spread to their own lands, 
attempted to overthrow it by force. Among the various 
reasons for this action on the part of the Allies, two stand out 
particularly: (1) Members of the Bolshevist government un¬ 

wisely and blatently preached a coming revolution for the 
world outside their own borders; and (2) the Bolshevist plan 
had not been put into operation by the deliberate will of 
the Russian nation, but rather by a skillful coup d’etat on 
the part of the small but perfectly organized class of town 
workers led by the Communist Party. 

Indeed, the Bolshevist leaders frankly proclaimed that (until 
they could train up a new generation) their government was not 
to be a democracy but a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” 
representing a very small part of the nation. Apportionment 
of delegates to the soviets was arranged, openly, so that ten 
peasants had no more weight than one factory worker. But the 
ignorant peasants (still making more than ninety per cent of the 
nation) were so poorly organized, and so content with the lands 
they had been permitted to appropriate, that they acquiesced 
passively; and the small capitalist and professional classes 
were quickly suppressed. The Bolshevists seized control of 
the army and the press, and put down despotically all public 
agitation against their socialist system. At first, to be sure, 
they treated the old capitalist class with consideration so far 

1 These classes, too, especially in France, held the millions of dollars’ worth 
of old Russian bonds, which the Bolshevists now unwisely repudiated on 
the ground that the Tsars had secured the money to hold the Russian people 
in bondage. 


Free speech 
suppressed 









664 


BOLSHEVIST RUSSIA 


The red 
terror 


Allied sup¬ 
port for 
“ emigrant ” 
invaders 


Russian 
people 
rally patri¬ 
otically to 
the govern¬ 
ment 


as concerned their personal safety. But a little later, when 
the world was attacking Russia in open war, and when the dis¬ 
possessed Russian classes were carrying on a campaign of assas¬ 
sination of Bolshevist baders and had struck down Lenin with 
a dangerous wound, the Bolshevists adopted a deliberate policy 
of “ Terror,” arresting and executing some thousands of “ aris¬ 
tocrats,” and “bourgeois” until opposition was crushed. This 
parallels the story of the French Revolution except that the 
Russian “Terror,” bloody as it was, was shorter if not less atro¬ 
cious than the French. 

Even before the Terror, the various non-socialist forces might 
have rallied, to overthrow or at least to modify Bolshevism, if a 
political blunder of the Allies had not identified Bolshevist rule 
with Russian patriotism. Like the French “emigrant” nobles' 
of 1792, the Russian courtiers and nobles in 1917, fleeing from 
the Revolution, levied war against the new government of their 
country from without — with foreign aid. Supplied lavishly 
by the Allies and America with arms and money, they at first 
won some success. Kolchak for a time held most of Siberia, — 
succeeded, when the Bolshevists crushed him, by the Japanese; 
Denekin, and later Wrangel, began invasion from Ukrainia; and 
Mannerheim threatened Petrograd from the west. (It is to be 
added that hostile Roumania and Poland and small reactionary 
armies in the other new Baltic states, with the Allied blockade of 
Archangel, made the cordon complete.) All these Russian emi¬ 
grant leaders claimed that they desired constitutional govern¬ 
ment, but soon their deeds proved that they plotted for the 
restoration of despotism, and the needless and unspeakable 
atrocities of the various “White” terrors that followed their 
early successes at least equaled the excesses charged against the 
Bolshevists. 

It had been claimed that the masses of the Russian 
people, encouraged by the presence of invading armies, would 
rally to overthrow Bolshevist tyranny. Instead they rallied to 
the Bolshevists, to drive out foreign invaders. Especially did 
the leading intellectuals” of Russia, like the famous author 
Maxim Gorky, now offer their services to that government, 


THE FAMINE OF 1922 


665 


although many of them had just been suffering bitterly from it. 
The Russian organization showed amazing ability, and before 
1920 the newly created “Red army” swept the invaders from 
Russian soil, except for the Japanese in far-eastern Siberia. 
True, there followed twelve months more of war with Poland, 
aided freely with French money and officers and American 
munitions; 1 but at last, by wise diplomacy, Russia secured 
peace in that quarter also. 

The Allied “blockade” of Russia, however, lasted on in 
fact into 1921. The small Baltic states, from which she had won 
peace, had no resources for trade; and though England and 
America had technically lifted the blockade some months 
earlier, both continued to refuse passports and even mail 
and wire communication. This policy absolutely prevented 
trade. Meantime the lack of food and of medical supplies — 
which the Bolshevist government was offering to pay for in gold 
— killed more people (mainly mothers, young babies, and other 
hospital cases) than another war. The blockade, too, kept 
Russia from getting cotton or rubber for her factories, or loco¬ 
motives for her railroads, or machinery for her agriculture; 
and so gave the Bolshevists a 'plausible excuse for the slowness of 
their industrial revival. 

Then there descended on unhappy Russia in 1921-2 the most 
horrible famine ever known even in that land of famines. 
When the large tracts of the former propertied class, which 
used to be farmed by machinery, were turned over to the peas¬ 
ants by the Revolution, it was impossible for them to cultivate 
these on as extensive a scale as formerly, because they 
lacked organization and machinery. To aggravate this con¬ 
dition Russia was visited by a long drought of unheard- 
of severity which resulted in a crop of only one-fortieth the 
average, so that, in the absence of trade with the world, 
millions were stolidly dying of hunger. This unparalleled 
suffering touched the heart of the world; and for months 

1 For a time the British government, it was thought, planned to send 
an English army; but such a project was effectively barred by the unani¬ 
mous slogan frojn English organized labor— “not a man, not a gun, not 
a penny!” 


The Russian 
“ blockade ” 


The Rus¬ 
sian fam¬ 
ine of 
1921-2 





666 


A NEW AGE 


The war 
and civili¬ 
zation 


several foreign governments and charitable organizations 
kept on hurrying food and clothing to the stricken land. 

In the World War fifty-nine million men served in arms — 
nearly all the physically fit of the leading peoples on the globe. 
These suffered thirty-three million casualties, of which fourteen 
million were deaths or irremediable mutilation and ruin, besides 
an incalculable number of vitiated constitutions. Almost as 
many more non-combatants were victims of famine and pesti¬ 
lence. And the evil runs over into future generations. In all 
the warring countries the birthrate has declined alarmingly and 
the human quality has deteriorated. As to material wealth, a 
huge portion of all that the world had been slowly storing up 
for generations has gone and in many districts all machinery 
for producing wealth is in ruins. 

Indeed the world has used up its prospects for long to come. 
Future generations are mortgaged to pay the war debts. Amer¬ 
ica entered the struggle late, and made comparatively little 
sacrifice; but even that country came out of the war with 
a debt larger than the total receipts of its treasury in all its 
century and a half of history. 1 England suffered less than the 
continent; but in England, merely to keep up the interest on 
the debt, along with her old annual expenditure, the nation 
must raise five billions of dollars a year — which means a taxa¬ 
tion per family of about twenty times that which an average 
American family paid before the war. The totals of French 
and German indebtedness are so huge as to have little mean¬ 
ing to us. 

This financial distress is tremendously aggravated by dis¬ 
order in the currency in European lands. During the war 
years, or very soon after, nearly all the gold of the world passed 
into America. Most continental countries have no money 
except a terribly depreciated paper money, — money worth 
in Germany about one fortieth its face, and in Austria less than 
one two-hundreth. 2 This demoralizes all industry at home, 

1 This does not include some ten billion dollars lent by America to the 
Allies during the war, the payment of which is problematical except in so 
far as Britain is concerned. 

2 1.e., in February, 1922. 


THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE 


667 


creates bitter suffering' for the poor and for people living on 
salaries and other fixed incomes, and of itself it could prevent 
the revival of foreign trade. 

The World War struck civilization a staggering blow, but there 
are hopeful signs that the warning has not been in vain. 

Two of the great powers suffered little directly from that 
war, — the United States and Japan. Between these two there 
were old causes of irritation ; and the war left with them new dis¬ 
putes — as to Japan’s relations to China (and to American 
trade there); as to her control of Pacific cables wrested from 
Germany; and so on. At once the two countries entered upon 
an open and ominous rivalry in enlarging their navies, upon a 
scale never before dreamed of, and in fortifying their Pacific 
possessions. To any one who held in mind the lessons of the 
past, all this indicated at least a serious danger that America 
and Japan might soon drift into another annihilating war — 
which of course would quickly involve the rest of the exhausted 
world. 

Wise statesmanship has for the present removed this peril. 
Diplomatic negotiation of the usual sort was failing to lessen 
the danger; but in the summer of 1921, Mr. Harding, President 
of the United States, called an international conference at Wash¬ 
ington to consider the limitation of naval armaments and the 
matters of dispute in the Pacific. This Washington Conference 
was attended, of course, by representatives of Britain, France, 
Italy, and Japan, and also of four smaller powers with interests 
in the Pacific — China, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland. 
Charles Evans Hughes, the American Secretary of State, presided. 
(China, not unnaturally perhaps, was present in the part of a 
petitioner rather than in that of an equal partner in conclu¬ 
sions.) 

The Conference opened November 12, 1921, and continued 
twelve weeks. On the opening day Mr. Hughes took away the 
breath of the world by making public a detailed proposal for 
naval reduction. Britain and America, according to this plan, 
should keep navies of equal power; Japan should have three 
fifths the strength of either of them; each of the three was to 


Pacific 

questions 


The Wash¬ 
ington Con¬ 
ference of 
November, 
1921 


The “ naval 
holiday ” 






668 


A NEW AGE 


scrap all new ships in construction and a certain proportion of its 
old vessels ; 1 and no new warship should be begun by any of them 
for ten years. The amazed world sent up a joyous acclaim 
of approval and eventually the proposal was adopted without 
essential change. 2 It also provided for stopping the fortification 



An Impressive Scene at the Cenotaph, London. 

of Pacific Islands by America and Japan. Britain and Japan 
agreed that it was unnecessary to renew their twenty-year 
alliance (p. 606), which was about to expire and which many 
Americans regarded as a menace. And the great cable stations 
in the Pacific, at the island of Yap and elsewhere, were opened 
freely to the United States and other countries before shut out 
from them. 

Some justice China got less than she wanted and less than America would 
for China have been pleased to see her get; but she got much. Japan 
withdrew the most offensive of her twenty-one points (p. 613) 

1 All this applied to “capital ships,” — dreadnoughts, super-dread¬ 
noughts, and armored cruisers (such ships as are valuable not so much for 
defense as for attack). 



THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE 


669 


— which had required China to accept Japanese officials into 
her administration in order to care for Japan’s interests in 
China; and she promised definitely to surrender Shantung 
within five years, upon condition that China at that time 
should pay a specified and not unreasonable price for the railroad 
built there by Germany and Japan. Britain freely returned 
Waihaiwai to China (p. 608). All the powers, too, surrendered 
certain peculiar rights which they had enjoyed, beyond the con¬ 
trol of the Chinese government, — rights which had been a 
humiliation to Chinese dignity and which often became a cover 
for exploitation. All, too, agreed to maintain in future an 
“open door” policy in their relations with China, and to make 
public at once any future treaty with that country. 

The unfortunate position of France made it impossible to 
secure any agreement to reduce land armaments or to accom¬ 
plish anything worth while in submarine reduction. Many other 
valuable suggestions came to naught for the time. But the 
actual accomplishment of the Washington Conference is full 
of promise for the world. It has made war between the great 
powers over Pacific questions almost unthinkable for at least 
ten years — and we may hope that it has pointed a way by which 
statesmen may use that interval to render future wars impossible. 

Meanwhile, Canada, in close spiritual union with the Mother 
Country and the other members of the “ British Commonwealth 
of Nations,” will exert her steadily growing influence, through 
the League of Nations and otherwise, for the reestablishment 
of peace and good-will among the peoples of the Earth, 


A promise 
of better 
things 


























































APPENDIX 


A SELECT LIST OF BOOKS ON WORLD HISTORY 
FOR SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS 

Prehistoric Culture 

Clodd, E., Story of Primitive Man (“ Primer ”). Appleton, New York. 
- Story of the Alphabet. Appleton. 

Davenport, E., Domesticated Animals and Plants. Ginn, Boston. 
Dodge, R. J., Our Wild Indians. Hartford. 

Holbrook, F., Cave , Mound, and Lake Dwellers. Heath, Boston. 

Joly, N„ Man before Metals. Appleton. 

Mason, O. T., Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture. Appleton. 
Oriental History 

Baikie, James, Story of the Pharaohs (illustrated). Macmillan. 
Breasted, J. H., History of the Ancient Egyptians. Scribner, New York. 
The same author has a larger, finely illustrated work covering the 
same ground, History of Egypt. Scribner, New York. 

Davis, William Stearns, Readings in Ancient History. Allyn and 
Bacon, Boston. Two volumes : “ Greece and the East ” and “ Rome 
and the West.” 

Volume I contains 60 pages of “ source material ” in Oriental 
history, with valuable introductions and comment. 

Hommel, F., Civilization of the East (“ Primer ”). Macmillan. 
Hogarth, D. P., The Ancient East (“Home University”). Holt. 
Jackson, A. V. W., Zoroaster. Macmillan. 

Myres, J. L., Dawn of History (“ Home University ”). Holt. 

Petrie, W. F., Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt (illustrated). McClurg. 

Somewhat technical, but by a famous Egyptian explorer. 

Sayre, A. H., Babylonians and Assyrians. Revell, Chicago. 

Winckler, Hugo, Babylonia and Assyria. Scribner. 

More recent in scholarship than Sayre, but less readable. 

Ancient Crete 

Baikie, James, Sea Kings of Crete (illustrated). Macmillan. 

Hawes and Hawes, Crete, the Forerunner of Greece. Harpers. 

1 









2 


APPENDIX 


Greek History 

Source Material 

Davis, William Stearns, Readings in Ancient History. 

See above. This should be the first library material purchased 
for Greek history. Its use will make students wish to know more of 
ancient authors. 

Aristotle, On the Constitution of Athens; translated by Kenyon. Mac¬ 
millan. 

This is the least readable of the books mentioned in this list; but 
it can be used in parts, under a teacher’s direction. 

Herodotus, Rawlinson’s translation, edited by Grant; two volumes. 
Scribner. 

-Macaulay’s translation; two volumes. Macmillan. 

Homer’s Iliad, translated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers. Macmillan. 

Homer’s Odyssey , translated by Butcher and Lang. Macmillan. 

-Translated by Palmer. Houghton. 

Plutarch, Lives; translated by Clough; Everyman’s Library (Dutton, 
New York); three volumes. 

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War; Jowett’s translation. 
Clarendon Press, Oxford; four volumes, or the same edited in one 
volume and published by Lothrop, Boston. 

Everyman’s Library (Dutton, New York) gives several volumes 
of these classics at cheaper rates. Constant additions are made 
to the Library. 

Modern Works 

Abbott, E., Pericles (“ Heroes ”). Putnam, New York. 

Bury, J. B., History of Greece to the Death of Alexander. Macmillan. 

Church, E. J., Trial and Death of Socrates. Macmillan. 

A translation of four of Plato’s Dialogues touching upon this 
period of Socrates’ life. They are also the easiest of Plato’s writings 
for young people to understand. It has valuable comments. 

Cox, G. W., Greeks and Persians. Epochs Series. Longmans. New 
York. 

- The Athenian Empire. Epochs Series. Longmans. 

Cunningham, W., Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects: Ancient 
Times. Macmillan. 

The best work on its special phase. Very full for Greece. 

Davis, William Stearns, A Day in Old Athens. Allyn and Bacon, 
Boston. 

- A Victor of Salamis (novel). Macmillan. 

Exceedingly vivid presentation of Greek life. 






















APPENDIX 


3 


Gardiner, E. N., Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals (illustrated). Mac¬ 
millan. 

Gayley, C. M., Classic Myths. Ginn, Boston. 

Grant, A. J., Greece in the Age of Pericles. Scribner. 

Gulick, Chas. B., Life of the Ancient Greeks (illustrated). Appleton. 

Mahaffy, J. P., Alexander’s Empire. Putnam, New York. 

—— Old Greek Life (“ Primer ”). American Book Co. 

- Progress of Hellenism in Alexander’s Empire. University of 

Chicago Press. 

Murray, Gilbert, Euripides and His Age (“ Home University ”). Holt. 

Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, Alexander the Great (“ Heroes ”). Putnam. 

Bury is the best single work on Greek history. It closes with 
the death of Alexander. Cox’s volumes in the Epochs Series are 
slightly preferable for the Athenian period; and Wheeler’s Alexan¬ 
der is admirable for its period. For the age after Alexander, the best 
book is Mahaffy’s Alexander’s Empire or his Progress of Hellenism. 

Zimmern, A. E., The Greek Commonwealth (Oxford). 

Roman History 


Source Material 

Davis, William Stearns, Readings in Ancient History , as for Greek 
History above. 

Tacitus. 2 vols. Macmillan. 

Modern Works 

Beesly, A. H., The Gracchi , Marius and Sulla. Epochs Series. Long¬ 
mans. 

Bradley, H., The Goths (“Nations”). Putnam. 

Bury, J. B., The Roman Empire to 180 a.d. (“ Student’s ”). Ameri¬ 
can Book Co. 

Capes, W. W., Early Roman Empire. Epochs Series. Longmans. 

- Age of the Antonines. Epochs Series. Longmans. 

Carr, The Church and the Empire. Longmans. 

Church, A. J., Roman Life in the Days of Cicero. Macmillan. 

Church, R. W., Beginning of the Middle Ages. Epochs Series. Long¬ 
mans. 

Davis, William Stearns, A Friend of Caesar (fiction). Macmillan. 
Firth, J. B., Augustus Caesar. Putnam, New York. 

- Constantine the Great. Putnam, New York. 

Fowler, Warde, Caesar (“ Heroes ”). Putnam.- 
Fowler, Social Life in the Age of Cicero. Macmillan. 

Fowler, Rome (“ Home University ”). Holt. 









4 


APPENDIX 


How and Leigh, History of Rome to the Death of Caesar. Longmans. 
Ihne, Wilhelm, Early Rome. Epochs Series. Longmans. 

Inge, W. R., Society in Rome under the Caesars. Scribner. 

Johnston, H. W., Private Life of the Romans. Scott, Foresman & Co., 
Chicago. 

Jones, H. S., The Roman Empire. Putnam. 

Pelham, H. F., Outlines of Roman History. Putnam. 

A single volume covering the whole period to 476 a.d., by a great 
scholar and teacher. 

Pellison, Roman Life in Pliny's Time. New York. 

Preston and Dodge, Private Life of the Romans. Leach, Boston. 

Smith, R. B., Rome and Carthage. Epochs Series. Longmans. 
Thomas, E., Roman Life under the Caesars. London. 

Tighe, Ambrose, Development of the Roman Constitution (“ Primers ”). 
American Book Co. 


From the “ Fall of Rome ” to Columbus 


Source Material 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Bohn). 

Chronicles of the Crusades (Bohn). 

Davis, William Steams, Readings in Ancient History, II. Allyn and 


Bacon, Boston. 

Einhard, Charlemagne. American Book Co. 

English History from Contemporary (Writers). Edited by F. York 
Powell. 

A series of ten small volumes, all very valuable. Putnam, New 
York. 

Hill, Mabel, Liberty Documents. Longmans. 

Joinville, Memoir of St. Louis. (Various editions.) 

Lanier (editor), The Boy's Froissart. Scribner. 

Marco Polo, The Travels of. Everyman’s Library. 

Ogg, T. A., Source Book of Medieval History. American Book Co. 



Modern Works 


Adams, G. B., Growth of the French Nation. Macmillan. 

- Civilization during the Middle Age. Scribner. 

Archer and Kingsford, The Crusades (“ Nations ”). Putnam. 

Balzani, Popes and Hohenstaufen. Longmans. 

Beard, Charles, An Introduction to English Historians (extracts from 
leading authorities on interesting topics). Macmillan. 

Boyeson, H. H., Norway (“ Nations ”). Putnam. 


















APPENDIX 


5 


Brown, Horatio, The Venetian Republic (“ Temple Primers ”). Mac¬ 
millan. 

Bryce, James, Holy Roman Empire. Macmillan. 

Cheyney, E. P., Industrial and Social History of England. Macmillan. 
Church, Beginnings of the Middle Ages (“ Epochs ”). Longmans. 
Clemens (Mark Twain), Joan of Arc. Harper. 

Cornish, F. W., Chivalry. Macmillan. 

Cox, G. W., The Crusades (“ Epochs ”). Longmans. 

Cunningham and McArthur, Outlines of English Industrial History. 
Macmillan. 

Cutts, Parish Priests and their People. London. 

Davis, H. W. C., Charlemagne (“ Heroes ”). Putnam. 

Emmerton, Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages. Ginn. 

Gilman The Saracens (“ Nations ”)• Putnam. 

Gray, The Children's Crusade. Houghton. 

Green, J. R., Short History of the English People. American Book Co. 
Green, Mrs., Henry II. Macmillan. 

Hodgkin, T., Charles the Great. Macmillan. 

Hughes, Thomas, Alfred the Great. Macmillan. 

Jenks, Edward Plantagenet (“ Heroes ”). Putnam. 

Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars. Putnam. 

Jiriczek, Northern Hero Legends. Macmillan. 

Lane-Poole, Saladin (“ Heroes ”). Putnam. 

Masterman, J. H. B., Dawn of Medieval Europe (“ Six Ages ”). Mac¬ 
millan. 

Mullinger, University of Cambridge. Longmans. 

Oman, C. W. C., Byzantine Empire (“ Nations ”). Putnam. 

Pears, E., Fall of Constantinople. Harper. 

Perry, F., St. Louis (“ Heroes ”). Putnam. 

Shepherd, W. R., Historical Atlas. Holt. 

Stubbs, Early Plantagenets (“ Epochs ”) Longmans. 

Tout, T. F., Edward I. Macmillan. 

Van Dyke, History of Painting. New York. 

Zimmem, H., The Hansa (“ Nations ”)• Putnam. 

Renaissance and Reformation Period 
Beard, Martin Luther. London. 

Beazley, Prince Henry the Navigator (“ Heroes ”)• Putnam. 

Bourne, E. G., Spain in America (Am. Nation Series). Harper. 
Fletcher, Gustavus Adolphus (“ Heroes ”). Putnam. 

Fox-Bourne, Sir Philip Sidney (“ Heroes ”)• Putnam. 

Harrison, F., William the Silent. Macmillan. 

Hulme, Renaissance and Reformation. Century Co. 








6 


APPENDIX 


Lindsay, T. W., Luther and the German Reformation. Scribner. 
McGiffert, Martin Luther. Century Co. 

Sichel, Edith, The Renaissance (“Home University”). Holt. 

Vedder, The Reformation in Germany. Macmillan. 

Britain and the British Empire 

Barker, Ernest, Ireland in the Last Fifty Years. Oxford. 

Beer, G. L., History of British Socialism. Macmillan, 

- Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy. 2 vols. 

Egerton, H. E., British Foreign Policy in the Nineteenth Century. Mac¬ 
millan. 

- A Short History of British Colonial Policy. Methuen. 

- British Colonial Policy in the 20th Century. Oxford. 

Gretton, R. H., A History of the Modern English People. Grant Rich¬ 
ards. 

- The Evolution of Parliament. Longmans. 

Hall, H. Duncan, The British Commonwealth of Nations, Methuen. 
Kennedy, W. P. M., The Constitution of Canada. Oxford University 
Press. 

Moneypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli. John Murray. 

Morley, John, Life of Gladstone. Macmillan. 

- Life of Cobden. Nelson. 

Muir, Ramsay, Short History of the British Commonwealth. 2 vols. 
G. Philip and Son. 

Parkman’s works, including Montcalm and Wolfe. Little, Brown & Co. 
Paul, Herbert, Reign of Queen Anne. Wayfarer’s Library. 

Pollard, A. F., History of England (“Home University”). Holt. 

Lord Rosebery, Pitt. Macmillan. 

Seeley, Expansion of England. Macmillan. 

Strachey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians. Chatto & Windus. 

- Queen Victoria. Chatto & Windus. 

Trevelyan, G. M., British History in the Nineteenth Century. 
Longmans. 

- England under the Stuarts. Methuen. 

Woodward, The Expansion of the British Empire. Cambridge. 

France 

Anderson, F. M., Constitutions and Other Documents Illustrating the His¬ 
tory of France, 1789-1907. H. W. Wilson Co., New York City. 
Belloc, Hilaire, The French Revolution (“Home University”). Holt. 
- Danton. Nelson. 

Bourgeois, Emile, Modern France. Cambridge. 

Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the French Revolution. J. M. Dent. 
Fisher, H. A. L., Napoleon (“Home University”). Holt. 

- Bonapartism. Oxford. 


















APPENDIX 


7 


Johnston, R. M., The French Revolution. Henry Holt. 

Lowell, E. J., Eve of the French Revolution. Houghton, Mifflin. 
Madelin, Louis, The French Revolution. Putnam. 

Matthews, Shailer, .The French Revolution. Longmans. 

Rose, J. H., Napoleon. Macmillan. 

- The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era. Cambridge. 

Sait, Politics and Government of France. World Book Co., Yonkers-on^ 
Hudson. 

Stephens, Morse, Revolutionary Europe , 1789-1815. Macmillan. 
Young, Arthur, Travels in France. Bohn’s Popular Library. 


Italy 

King, Bolton, History of Italian Unity (1814-1871). Scribner. 

—— Mazzini. Scribners. 

Stillman, W., The Union of Italy (1815-1895). Cambridge. 

Thayer, Cavour. 2 vols. Riverside Popular Library. Houghton, Mifflin. 
Trevelyan, G. M., Garibaldi and the Making of Italy. Nelson. 


Germany 

Von Biilow, Imperial Germany. Cassell. 

Dawson, W. H., The Evolution of Modern Germany. Scribner. 
Robertson, Grant, Bismarck. Holt. 

Russell, German Social Democracy. Longmans. 

Usher, Pan-Germanism. Constable. 

Ward, A., Germany. Cambridge. 

Russia 

Beazley, Russia. Oxford. 


America 

Chronicles of America Series. 50 vols. Glasgow, Brook & Co. 
Farrand, Max, The Development of the United States. Yale University. 
West, W. M., American People. Allyn and Bacon. 


The War and the Peace 

Hayes, Carlton, A Brief History of the Great War. Macmillan. 

Pollard, A. F., A Short History of the Great War. Harcourt, Brace & Co. 











8 


APPENDIX 


Seymour, Charles, Diplomatic Background of the Great War (1870-1914). 
Yale. 

Temperley, A History of the Peace Conference. Hodder & Stoughton. 


Miscellaneous 

Marriott, J. A. R., The Eastern Question. Oxford. 
Phillips, W. Alison, Poland (“Home University”). 
Schevill, The Balkans. Harcourt, Brace & Co. 



Holt. 


General 


Barry, William, The Papacy and Modern Times (“Home University”). 
Holt. 

Bowman, The New World. World Book Co., Yonkers-on-Hudson. 
Breasted and Robinson, History of Europe, Ancient and Medieval. 
Ginn. 

Bryce, Viscount, Modern Democracies. Macmillan. 

Bury, J., A History of Freedom of Thought. Macmillan. 

Fueter, World History (1815-1920). Harcourt, Brace & Co. 

Gibbons, H. A., Introduction to World Politics. Century Co. 

Hayes, Carleton, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe. 
2 vols. Macmillan. 

Hazen, C. D., Europe since 1815. Holt. 

- Modern Europe. Holt. 

Hearnshaw, F. J. C., Main Currents of European History (1815-1915). 
Macmillan. 

Kirkup, History of Socialism. Macmillan. 

Mowat, R. W., European Diplomacy, 1815-1914. Arnold. 

Muir, Ramsay, The Expansion of Europe. Constable. 

- Philip's New Historical Atlas for Students. (Philip & Son). 

Ogg Social Progress in Contemporary Europe, 1789-1912. Macmillan. 
Phillips, W. Alison, The Confederation of Europe. Longmans. 
Robinson and Beard, History of Europe, Our Own Times. Ginn. 

Rose, J. Holland, The Development of the European Nations. Con¬ 
stable. 

Wells, H. G., An Outline of History. Macmillan. 










INDEX 


Pronunciation, except for familiar names and terms, is shown by divi¬ 
sion into syllables and accentuation. When diacritical marks for Eng¬ 
lish names are needed, the common marks of Webster’s Dictionaries 
are used. German and French pronunciation can be indicated only im¬ 
perfectly to those who are not familiar with the languages; but attention 
is called to the following marks: ie and ce = e ; ie = l ; the soft as¬ 
pirated guttural sound g of the German is marked g ; the corresponding 
ch (as in ich) is marked k ; the sound of the nasal French n is marked n ; 
for the German a and au the equivalents are indicated, to prevent con¬ 
fusion with English a; 6 is always the German letter; and ii is the 
German sound which is equivalent to French u. In French words with 
an accent on the final syllable, that accent only is marked; but it should 
be understood that in such words the syllables as a rule receive nearly 
equal stress. Silent letters are put in Italic. 

For most geographical names , except such common ones as England or 
Italy, the index indicates a map on which the location is shown. 


Aachen (aK'fin), 260; map after 

p. 260. 

Abbey, term explained, 252, note. 
“Abdul the Assassin” (ab' dul), 
623. 

Abelard (ab'e-lard), Peter, 301. 
Abraham, founder of Hebrews, 48. 

Absolutism, 231. 

Abyssinia (ab-ys-sln'i-a), 24; see 
Ethiopia , map, 10; and Italy, 
571; independent , 603. 

Academy, Plato’s, at Athens, see 
Museum. 

Accad (ac'cad), 30; map after p. 
18. 

Achaea (a-chae'a), map after p. 52. 
Achaean (a-chse'an) League, 142, 
note. 

Achilles (a-chll'le§), 62, 64, 66. 
Acropolis (a-cr5p'o-lis), the central 
hill-fort about which grew up an¬ 
cient cities, 61. 


Acropolis of Athens, in age of Peri¬ 
cles, 103 and map opposite, 106- 
7, and Plate XX. 

Act of Settlement (English), 340. 

Act of Supremacy (English), 384. 

Actium (ac'ti-um), Battle of, 210; 
map after p. 52. 

Adrianople (ad'ri-an-o'pl), Battle 
of, in 378 a.d., 245; map after 

p. 260 . 

Adriatic Sea, dividing line between 
Greek and Latin cultures, 182, 
224; between Greek and Roman 
churches, 256. 

Aediles (ae'diles), Roman, 169. 

Aegean (ae-gse'an) Sea, home of 
early culture, 53; see Crete, 
Knossos, Mycenae, maps after 
pp. 52, 70. 

Aegina (ae-gi'na), map after p. 52. 

Aegospotami (ae-gos-pSt'a-mi) 
(Goat Rivers), Battle of, 127. 


9 













10 


INDEX 


Aemilianus (ae-mil-i-a'nus), Pub¬ 
lius Scipio, 180-1. 

Aequians (e'kwi-ans), map, 150. 

Aeschylus (a&s'chy-lus), 108. 

Africa, early copper civilizations in 
Nile Valley, 6; see Egypt; cir¬ 
cumnavigation of, by ancient 
Egyptians, 27; Phoenician col¬ 
onies in, 46, 47; Greek colonies 
in, 70; prosperity under Rome, 
219, 220; Vandal kingdom in, 
245 and map after 248; con¬ 
quered by Mohammedans, 254; 
see Egypt and Carthage; parti¬ 
tion of after 1884, 603 and map 
opp.; after World War, 656. 

Agamemnon (ag-a-m6m'n6n), 62. 

Agesilaus (a-ggs-i-la'us), King of 
Sparta, 130. 

Agora (ag'o-ra), at Athens, 120; 
map, 101. 

Agrarian Laws, term explained, 
192, note; Solon’s, 77; Licin- 
ian, 160 ; of the Gracchi, 192-6; 
of Caesar, 207. 

Agricola (a-gric'o-la), and the Pan¬ 
theon, Plate facing 225. 

Agriculture, prehistoric, woman’s 
part in, 4-5; selection of our 
food plants, 7; in Egypt, 16-7; 
in Babylonia, 38; in Homeric 
Greece, 63-4; in age of Pericles, 
119; early Roman, 158; Roman 
about 200 b.c., 170; after Punic 
Wars, 185-8; serf labor in later 
Empire, 235; primitive under 
Feudal system, 273-6; Saracenic, 
294; in France before the Revo¬ 
lution, 404-5; eighteenth cen¬ 
tury improvements in England 
(rotation of crops), 465-6; farm 
tools in 1800, cut facing 468; and 
new machinery, cut facing 476; 
cooperation in Denmark, 578-9. 


Airplanes, in war, 633; see Tenny¬ 
son. 

Aisne (an), Battle of, 647; map 
facing 647. 

Alabama Arbitration, the, 523. 

Alba Longa (Al'ba Lon'ga), 150; 
map, ib. 

Albania, 621; kingdom of, 624. 

Albigenses (al-bl-g6n'se§), 337- 

8 . 

Alchemy (al'chgm-y), 302-3. 

Alcibiades (al-cl-bi'a-des), 126. 

Alemanni (&-la-man'ne), 229; map 
after 248. 

Alexander the Great, 35; con¬ 
quests, 135-7; merging of the 
East and West, 137-8; ex¬ 
plorations, 139; routes, map 
after 134. 

Alexander I (of Russia), 440, 445, 
449-50, 451, 587. 

Alexander II, 588-90. 

Alexander III, 590-1. 

Alexander VI, Pope, 315. 

Alexandria, name of many Greek 
cities in Asia, 137-8, map after 
p. 134. 

Alexandria in Egypt, founded, 136; 
glory of, 142; library at, 145; 
center of culture under Rome, 
224; Patriarchate of, 255; falls 
to Mohammedans, 256; map 
after p. 134. 

Alexandrian Library, 145. 

Alexandrian Lighthouse, 141-2. 

Alexandrian Museum, 145-6. 

Alfred the Great, 268-9. 

Algebra, origin, 295. 

Algeria (al-ge'ri-a), 554-5. 

Alhambra (al-ham'bra), Plate 
XLV, facing 294. 

Alphabet, growth, 8; Phoenician, 
47; Cretan, 55; completed by 
the Greeks, 59. 
















INDEX 


11 


Alsace (al-sace'), becomes French, 
355; serfdom lingers in 1789, 
405; seized by Germany in 1871, 
545; recovered by France, 650; 
map after 558. 

America, discovery, 325-7; Euro¬ 
pean colonization of, 385 ff.; 
and European wars, 392-400; 
see United States of, South Amer¬ 
ica, Spanish America, etc. 

American democracy, contrasted 
with English, 513. 

American Revolution, 400-401; 
the younger Pitt upon, 509 ; in¬ 
fluence upon French Revolution, 
412, 414, note. 

Amiens (am-yan'), Peace of, 435; 
and World War, 646; map 
facing 647. 

Ammon, Temple of (Hall of Col¬ 
umns), at Karnak, Plate IV. 

Amos, Hebrew prophet, 51. 

Amphitheater (am-phi-the'a-ter), 
term explained, 208; at Pom¬ 
peii, 208; at Rome, see Colos¬ 
seum. 

Anaxagoras (an-&x-&g'o-ras), 110. 

Ancestor worship, primitive, 3; 
Egyptian, 22; Greek, 64; Ro¬ 
man, 153-4. 

Andrea del Sarto (an-dre'a del 
sar'to), 323. 

Anesthetics (an-es-thSt'ics), 472. 

Angles (an'gles), in Britain, 245; 
map after 248. 

Anglo-Japanese treaty (an'glo), 
(1902), 606; not renewed in 1922 
because of Washington Con¬ 
ference, which see. 

Anio (a'nl-o) River, 148; map, 150. 

Anne, Queen, and ministerial 
government, 384; last royal 
veto in England, 513. 

Anne Boleyn (bool'in), 339, 343. 


Antigone (an-tlg'o-ng), 115. 

Antioch, 220; map after p. 218. 

Antonines (an'to-nines), the, 217. 

Antoninus (an-to-ni'nus), Marcus 
Aurelius, 217-8, 226-7. 

Antoninus Pius, 217. 

Antonius (an-to'ni-us), Marcus 
(Mark Antony), 209, 210. 

Apelles (a-p6l'le§), 143. 

Aphrodite (aph-ro-di'te), 65; 
statue (of Melos), 143. 

Apollo (a-pol'io), 65 ; oracle of, 69; 
Belvedere, 141, 143; see Plate 
XVII. 

Appian (ap'pl-an), historian, 226. 

Appian (ap'pl-an) Way, the, 166, 
167; see Roman Roads, and map, 

p. 168. 

Appius Claudius, censor, 152, 167. 

Apprentices, see Gilds in Middle 
Ages. 

Aquae Sextiae (ak'we s6x'tl-e), 
Battle of, 198; map after p. 176. 

Aqueducts, of Pisistratus, 79; in 
Graeco-Oriental cities, 138; in 
Roman cities, 220. 

Aquitaine (&-kwI-tan'), 253, 255; 
map after 252. 

Arabic notation, origin, 7; and the 
Arabs, 294; adopted in Europe, 
297. 

Arbela (ar-be'la), Battle of, 136; 
map facing p. 135. 

Arbitration, international, 616-620. 

Arc, Joan (Jon) of, 312 and Plate 
opposite. 

Arch, Egyptian, 21; Babylonian 
(oldest known), 30; Roman, 
224, and many cuts; Norman, 
282; pointed in Gothic archi¬ 
tecture, Plates after 282, 288, 
and 304. 

Archbishops, origin, 255; in 
Middle Ages, 128. 








12 


INDEX 


Archimedes (ar-chi-me'des), 146, 
178. 

Architecture, prehistoric, Plate 
after p. 4; Egyptian, 15, 21, and 
Plates III-VIII; in Chaldea 
and Assyria, 39-40; Persian bor¬ 
rowed, 42 and Plate facing 45; 
Grecian, orders of, 72; in age of 
Pericles, 106-7; Roman (under 
the Empire), 225; Saracenic, 
294 and Plates after 254; Ro¬ 
manesque, Plate after 304 ; 
Gothic, 304, and Plates XLVII, 
XLVIII and especially L; and 
Bessemer steel, 472 and Plate 
facing p. 471. 

Archon (ar'ehon), 76. 

Areopagus (ar-e-Sp'a-giis), Council 
of, 76, 78. 

Ares (a're§), 65. 

Argentina, and arbitration, 617; 
progress, 618; trade of, 619. 

Argonne (ar-gonne'), American sol¬ 
diers in the, 605 and Plate 
facing 649; map facing 647. 

Argos (ar'gos), map after p. 52. 

Arian (a'rl-an) heresy, 241-2. 

Aristarchus (ar-is-tar'ehus), 146. 

Aristides (ar-is-ti'des), 91. 

Aristocracy, term explained, 62, 
note. 

Aristophanes (ar-Is-tSph'a-nes), 
108. 

Aristotle (Sr'Is-tSt-le), quoted on 
early Athens, 76, 80; and Alex¬ 
ander, 135, 139; philosophy, 
143-4; on sphericity of the 
earth, 146. 

Arius (a'rl-us), of Alexandria, 242. 

Arkwright (ark'wright), Richard, 
and the water frame, 467. 

Armada, see Spanish Armada. 

Armenia (ar-me'ni-a), map after 
p. 218; Turkish massacres in, 


568-9; independent after World 
War, 658. 

Armor, feudal, 269. 

Art, prehistoric, 3, 4, and Plates I 
and II; Egyptian, 21-2, and 
Plates III-X; Babylonian, 38- 
9, and cuts on 34-9, Plate 
XIII; Persian, borrowed, 42; 
Greek, to 500 b.c., 70-2; in age 
of Pericles, 106 ff.; in Alexan¬ 
drian age, 229-30; in Middle 
Ages, 304; at Renaissance, 
320. 

Artaxerxes (ar-ta-zerx'e§), cut fac¬ 
ing 44. 

Artemis (&r'te-mis), 165. 

Ashley (Shaftesbury), and factory 
reform, 520. 

Asia, Province of, 199. 

Aspasia (as-pa'sl-a), 113. 

Asquith (as'kwith), English prime 
minister, 529. 

Assyria (as-syr'i-a), 29-30; Em¬ 
pire, 31; militarism, 31-2; fall, 
32; society and culture (see 
Babylonia), 39, 40; see map 
after 18. 

Astrology, Chaldean, 38; Medie¬ 
val, 302. 

Astronomy, Egyptian, 20; Chal¬ 
dean, 38; Greek, 146; Sara¬ 
cenic, 294; Medieval, 357; 
Copernican, 357-8. 

Athanasius (3,th-an-a'sl-us), 241. 

Athene (a-the'ne), 65; statues of, 
on the Acropolis, 107. 

Athens, map after 52 and 94; plan, 
101; consolidation of Attica by, 
61; mother of “ Ionia,” 67; 
democratic gains before 500 b.c., 
76 ff.; discontent of the poor, 
77; wealth gains political power, 
77; written laws, 78; Solon’s 
reforms, 78-9; continued class 













INDEX 


13 


stride, and tyrants, 79-80; re¬ 
forms of Clisthenes, 80-1; and 
Persian Wars, 88-96; rebuilt, 
and walls, 97-8; the Piraeus, 
98; and Confederacy of Delos, 
99; and Athenian Empire, 100 
ff.; power and numbers, 183; 
democracy, 104 ff.; assembly, 
under Pericles, 105; juries and 
payment, 105-6; public service, 
106; intellect and art in age of 
Pericles, 106-12; as described 
by Pericles, 112; and Pelopon¬ 
nesian War, 124-9 ; Goat Rivers, 
and surrender, 127; under Spar¬ 
tan rule, 128 ff.; “ the Thirty,” 
and restoration of democracy, 
128-9; shelters Theban demo¬ 
crats, 130; and Philip of Mace- 
don, 134; center of learning 
under Rome, 224. 

Athos (a'thos), Mount, map after 
52. 

Attica, after Dorian invasions, 67; 
map after 52, and on 94. 

Attic Comedy, 109. 

Augsburg, Peace of, 334; map 
after p. 558. 

Augurs, Roman, 154. 

“ Augustan Age,” 212, 226. 

Augustine, missionary to Britain, 
268. 

Augustus, Roman Emperor, see 
Octavius Caesar. 

Aurelian (au-re'll-an), Emperor, 
229-30. 

Aurelius,, see Antoninus. 

Auspices, Roman, 154. 

Austerlitz, Battle of, 439. 

Australia, and English coloniza¬ 
tion, 540-1; federal union, 542- 
3; in World War, 632; at 
Peace Congress , which see. 

Australian ballot, 541. 


Austria, origin, 292; seized by 
Hapsburgs, 316; head of Holy 
Roman Empire, bulwark against 
Turks, 317; and Netherlands, 
319; and French Revolution, 
422, 426, 432; and Bonaparte’s 
Italian campaigns, 432-3; and 
Napoleonic Wars, 438-440, 442, 
445; becomes an “Empire,” 
444; and the rising after the 
retreat from Moscow, 447; “ re¬ 
stored ” at Congress of Vienna, 
449; dominates Germany, 454 
ff.; and Holy Alliance, 458 ff.; 
and Revolution of 1848, 486-90; 
loses Italy in 1859, 497-8; loses 
Germany in 1866, 502; the 
Dual Empire, see Austria-Hun¬ 
gary; the World War, 649, 
657-8. 

Austrian Succession, War of, 398. 

Austria-Hungary, creation, 573; 
conglomerate character, 573-4; 
and the Balkans, 623-4; annexes 
Bosnia, 624; and the occasion 
for the World War, 628; dis¬ 
solution of, 649; see Austria 
and Hungary. 

Avars, map after 260. 

Aventine (a'vSn-tine), the, map, 
151. 

Avignon (a-ven-y5n'), Papacy at, 
313-5; map facing 435. 

Babylon, map after 18, on 33; 
land and people, 29-30; early 
city-state, 30; and Hammurapi 
(First Empire), 31; subject to 
Assyria, 31; Second Empire, 
32-3; fall, 33; society, indus¬ 
try, and art, 34 ff.; cuneiform 
script, 36-7; laws of Hammu¬ 
rapi, 35-6; religion and morals, 
40. 








14 


INDEX 


“ Babylonian Captivity,” of the 

Church, 313-5. 

Bacon, Francis, 344; and scien¬ 
tific method, 358. 

Bacon, Roger, 303; and Colum¬ 
bus, 325-6. 

Bactriana (bac-trl-Sn'a), map fac¬ 
ing 135. 

Bagdad (ba,g'd&d), map after 260. 

“ Balance of Power ” policy, and 

war, 392 ff. 

Balkan district, the, a seedbed for 
war, 621 ff.; land and peoples, 
621-2; struggles with the Turk 
for freedom, 622-3; and Russian 
aid in 1877, 623; and Congress 
of Berlin, 623; wars of 1912-3, 
624-6; see World War and 
Peace Congress. 

Ball, John, and the Peasant Rising, 
307 ff. 

Baltic Provinces (of Russia), 396; 
attempts, to Russianize, 591; 
and World War, 646; see names 
of new states, Lithuania, Cour- 
land, Latvia. 

Banking, see Jews, Lombards. 

Banquet, in Greek life, 121-2. 

Barbarian Invasions, in Oriental 
history, 5, 25, 30, 32, 42-3; 
in times of Marius and Caesar, 
197, 201 ff.; on frontiers of 
Roman Empire, 223; into Em¬ 
pire from Aurelius to Aurelian, 
218, 229; success in 4th cen¬ 
tury, 244 ff.; see Teutons, 
Norsemen, Hungarians. 

“ Barbarians,” to Greeks, 68. 

Barca (bar'ca), see Hamilcar. 

“ Barrack Emperors,” 229. 

Barter, Trade by, see Money. 

Basilica (ba-sfi'I-ca), Plate after 
242. 

Bastille (bas-teel'), fall of, 414. 


Batavian (ba-ta'vi-an) Republic, 
432, 442. 

Battle, Trial by, 249. 

Bavaria, and the Franks, 253, 255; 
map facing 253. 

Bayeux (ba-e') Tapestry, 284. 

Beet sugar, 445. 

Belgium, see Netherlands; falls 
to Hapsburgs, 319; recovered 
by Spain after rebellion of 
16th century, 348-50; ceded to 
Austria at Utrecht, 394; and 
French Revolution, 422; an¬ 
nexed to France, 424, 432; 

annexed to Holland by Congress 
of Vienna, 449, 452; and Revo¬ 
lution of 1830, 463; in 19th cen¬ 
tury, 577-8; and the Congo 
State, 603; invaded by Ger¬ 
many, 629; heroic resistance 
ruins German plans, 631; and 
German Colonies in Africa, 656. 

Belleau (b6l-lo') Wood, Battle of, 
647; map facing 647. 

Belvedere (b61-ve-dere'), Apollo, 
141, 143. 

“ Benefit of clergy,” 280. 

Beneventum (ben-e-ven'tum), Bat¬ 
tle of, 162; map after 148. 

“ Benevolences,” 371. 

“ Benevolent despots,” and their 
failure, 402-3. 

Benvenuti, Italian authority upon 
Roman antiquities, Plates 
XXXI, XLI. 

Berlin, Congress of, in 1878, 524. 

“ Berlin to Bagdad,” 624. 

Bern, 335, and map opp. 

Bessemer steel, and modern ar¬ 
chitecture, 472. 

Bethmann-Hollweg, 629-30. 

Bible, translated into German by 
Luther, 332; the English (Wyc- 
lif’s), 108; use of English 




















INDEX 


15 


Bible under Henry VIII, 340; 
see Erasmus , Septuagint. 

“ Big Four,” the, at Versailles, 
653, 654. 

Bill of Rights (English), 382. 

“ Bills,” origin of, in Parliament, 
309. 

Biology, 597-8. 

Bishops, origin, 255; in Middle 
Ages, 279-80. 

Bismarck, Otto von, 5C1-5, 545, 
555, 563-8. 

Bithynia (bl-thyn'i-a), map after 

p. 218. 

“ Black Death,” the, 306-9. 

Black Sea, and early Greek colo¬ 
nies, 70. 

Blanc (blan), Louis, 481-2. 

Blenheim (blen'Im), Battle of, 393. 

Blucher (blii'ser), at Waterloo, 
451. 

Boeotia (boe-o'ti-a), map after 
p. 52; see Plataea, Thebes. 

Boers, in South Africa, 541-2. 

Bohemia, map after p. 260; and 
Hussites, 314-5; loses Austria 
to Hapsburgs, 316; and Thirty 
Years’ War, 353, 354; and Revo¬ 
lution of ’48, 486; see Czecho¬ 
slovakia. 

Boleyn (bool'in), Anne, 339, 343. 

Bolsheviki (bbl-shg-vl'ke), 642; 
rule in Russia, 662-6. 

Bonaparte, see Napoleon. 

Boniface VIII, Pope, 313. 

Bordeaux (bor-do'), map after 248. 

Borgia (bor'grn), family, 315. 

Bosnia, separated from other Serbs, 
621-2; given to Austria to 
administer, 623; annexed by 
Austria, 624; and furnishes 
pretext for World War, 628; 
merged in Jugoslavia , which see. 

Bosseney (bbss'nl), 507. 


Boxer Rising (China), 608-9. 

Braddock’s campaign, 399. 

Brandenburg, Mark, see Prussia. 

Brazil, 618, 619. 

“ Bread and Games,” 207-8. 

Bremen, 455; map after 558. 

Brenner Pass, the, transferred to 
Italy, 657. 

Brennus (brfn'nus), Gaul, 161. 

Brest-Litovsk, 646; map, 643. 

Bright, John, 521, 522. 

Britain, and Phoenicians, 46; and 
Romans, 213; Hadrian’s Wall 
in, 217; abandoned by Romans 
—> Teutonic Conquest, 267-8; 
rechristianized, 268; see Eng¬ 
land. 

Bronze Age, the, 6; see Egypt , 
Babylonia. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 519. 

Brunswick, proclamation of, 422-3. 

Brutus, Marcus, 209. 

Bulgarians, 621; under Turkish 
rule, 622-3; war of 1877, 623; 
and Congress of Berlin, 623; 
joins Teutons in World War, 
which see. 

“ Bull,” the Papal, 287. 

Bundesrath (boon'd^s-rat), 559. 

Bunyan, John, 380. 

Burgundians, settlement in Gaul, 
245; map after 248. 

Burgundy, Duchy of, map after 
p. 290. 

Burschenschaften, (bursch' en- 
schaf'tSn), 455. 

Byzant (coin), 295. 

Byzantine (by-zan'tine) Empire, 
see Greek Empire. 

Byzantium (b^-zan'ti-um), map 
after 70; see Constantinople. 

Cabinet government, evolution of, 
383-4; explained, 512-3. 






INDEX 


ltf 

Cadiz (ca-diz'), (or Ga'des), 
founded, 47; map after p. 
70. 

Caelian (caj'li-an) Hill, map, p. 
151. 

Caesar, Caius Julius, and Sulla, 
200, 201; in Gaul, 201; rupture 
with Pompey, 202 ff.; five-year 
rule, 205 ff.; the hope of subject 
peoples, 206; constructive work, 
206-8; murder, 209; author, 
226. 

“ Caesar,’’ a title, 219. 

Calendar, Egyptian, 20; Caesar’s, 
208; Gregory’s, 208, note. 

Caligula (c&-llg'u-la), Emperor, 
213. 

Calvin, John, 335-6. 

Calvinism, 334-6; see Presbyteri¬ 
anism, Huguenots, Puritanism. 

Cambon (kom-bon), 427. 

Campania (cam-pa'ni-a), map after 
p. 148. 

Campo Formio, Peace of, 432. 

Campus Martius (mar'ti-us), map, 
151. 

Canada, French colonization, 386 
ff.; becomes English, 399; de¬ 
velopment of self-government, 
540; and federal union, 542-3; 
and World War, 632; repre¬ 
sented in Peace Congress and 
in League of Nations, 653. 

Canal, Nile to Red Sea, 18, 27, 
44 and note. 

Cannae (can'nse), Battle of, 176. 

Canon Law, 280. 

Canterbury Tales, 304; quoted, 
see Chaucer. 

Capet (ka-pa'), Hugh, 291. 

Capetians (ca-pe'ti-ans), 291 ff. 

Capitalism, and industry, 474; 
see Industrial Revolution. 

Capitoline, the, map, p. 151. 


Capitularies (ca-plt'u-la-ries), see 
Charlemagne’s, 261. 

Cappadocians (cap-pa-do'cl-ans), 
map after 134. 

Capua (cap'u-&), destroyed by 
Rome, 176, 179; map after 148. 

Cardinals, College of, 281. 

Carlyle, 519. 

Carnot (car-nb'), “ Organizer of 
Victory,” 427, 428. 

Carolingians (car-o-lin'gi-ans), de¬ 
generate, 265-6, 290, 291; term 
explained, 290. 

Carpentry, in ancient Crete, 56. 

Carrier (kar-ri-a'), 428. 

Carthage, Phoenician colony, 47, 
124; and Greeks in Sicily, 88; 
and Rome, Punic Wars, 174- 
281; “ blotted out,” 180-1; 

rebuilt by Caesar, 207; map 
after p. 70. 

Cartwright, Edmund, 468. 

Cassius (cash'ius), and Caesar, 
209. 

Cassius, Spurius (spu'ri-us), 159. 

Castelar, 574-5. 

Catherine of Aragon, 329. 

Catherine II (Russia), 396. 

Cato, Marcus Portius, 180, 191. 

Cavalier Parliament, 381. 

“ Cavaliers ” (English), 377. 

Cave-men (Stone Age), 1-4. 

Cavour (ca-vour'), 497-9. 

Celt, term explained, 267, note. 

Censors, Roman, 169. 

Center, the (Catholic Political 
party in Germany), 564. 

Centralization, in government, 
term explained, 231. 

Ceres (ce'reg), 65, 153. 

Chaeronea (chaer-o-ne'a), Battle of, 
134. 

Chalcis (chal'gis), map after p. 52; 
and colonies, 70. 



INDEX 


17 


Chaldea (chal-de'a), map after 18; 
convenient but not strictly 
proper name for the Euphrates 
district; see Babylon. 

Chambord (sh6n-bor'), Count of, 
548-9. 

Chamonix (sh6m-on-ix'), Plate fac¬ 
ing 582. 

Champlain, 387. 

Champolion (sham-pol-li-on'), 
French authority on Egyptian 
hieroglyphics, 20. • 

Champs de Mars (shon de mars), 
Massacre of the, 417. 

Charlemagne (sharl'e-man), 279; 
defensive wars, 259-60; and 
revival of Roman Empire in the 
West, 260; civilization in his 
age, 261; government, 261; and 
learning, 262; place in history, 
262-3. 

Charles I (England), 371-8.’ 

Charles II, 378, 380-2. 

Charles I, of Spain, and Charles V 
(Holy Roman Empire), 319-20, 
331-334; Plate facing 334. 

Charles X (France), 461-2. 

Charles Albert, 490, 496. 

Charles the Bold, 319. 

Charles the Great, see Charlemagne 

Charles Martel (mar-tel'), 253, 255. 

Chartist movement (English), 516. 

Chateau-Thierry (shat-to'-tvar-e'), 
647; map facing 647. 

Chaucer, 304; quoted, 279, 307, 
330. 

Chemistry, see Alchemy; and 
Lavoisier, 408. 

Cheops (che'6ps), s eeKhufu. 

Child labor, 475-6; see Factory 
Acts. 

Chili, and arbitration 617; and 
the “A. B. C. concert/’ 618; 
trade of, 619. 


China, land and people, 606 ; 
stagnant civilization, 606-7; 
early European trade, 607; 
Opium War, 607-8; forced 
to open ports, 608; loses border 
provinces to European powers, 
608; Boxer Rising, 608-9; 
“ Open door ” policy and the 
United States, 609; and the 
Russo-Jap War, 609; Western¬ 
ization, 611-13; a republic, 
612; other progress, 612; and 
Japan, 613; and World War, 
640; see Washington Confer¬ 
ence. 

Chinvat (chln'vat) Bridge, the, 45. 

Chios (chl'os), map after 52. 

Chivalry, 277-9. 

Christ, birth, 212. 

Christ of the Andes, the, Plate 
facing 617; see Arbitration. 

Christianity, early beginnings, 212, 
214, 237; Nero’s persecution, 
214; debt to the Empire, 237; 
and persecutions, 237-9; tol¬ 
erated and favored by Constan¬ 
tine, 239; state religion under 
Theodosius, 241; persecutes 
pagans, 241; and heresies, 242- 
3; see Church, Papacy. 

Church, the, see Christianity and 
Papacy; organization and early 
history, 255-6; schism between 
East and West, 256-7; Roman 
hardship in Latin Christendom, 
257; temporal power, 257; 
see Papacy, Presbyterianism, etc. 

Churchill, Winston, 529, 530. 

Church of England, origin, 339-40; 
Protestant under Edward VI, 
340-1; Catholicism restored by 
Mary, 341-2; the Elizabethan 
Settlement, 343-6 ; and Puritan¬ 
ism, 368-76; Presbyterian in 




18 


INDEX 


Church of England ( Continued ) 
the Civil War, 378; Episcopacy 
restored, 380-1; disestablished 
in Ireland, 523, and in Wales, 
531. 

Cicero, 190; “ age of,” 226. 

Cid, Song of the, 303. 

Cilicia (cl-ll'cia), map after 70. 

Cimbri (cfm'bri), the, 197. 

Cimon, 100. 

Cincinnatus (cin-cin-na'tus), 171. 

Circuit Judges, in England, 285. 

Cisalpine (cis-aTpine) Gaul, map, 
148. 

Citeaux (sl-to'), Abbey of, 252. 

Cities, see Towns. 

City-States, in old Egypt, 11; in 
Euphrates valley, 30; in Hellas, 
— the limit of Greek political 
ideals, 61; failure, 132; ap¬ 
proach to, in Middle Ages, 
300. 

Civil Service, term defined, 106, 
note. 

Claudius (claud'i-us), Emperor, 
213. 

Claudius, Appius, 162, 167. 

Clazomenae (cla-zSm'e-nse), map 
after p. 70. 

Clemenceau, “ the Tiger,” 644; at 
the Peace Congress, 653, 654, 
and passim. 

Clement VII, 314. 

Cleon (cle'on), Athenian, 126. 

Cleopatra (cle-o-pa'tra), 204, 209. 

Clermont, the, 470 and Plate 
opp. 

Cleruchs (cler'uchs), 80. 

Cleveland, Grover, and arbitration, 
616. 

Clisthenes (clis'the-nes), 80-1. 

Clive, Robert, 399. 

Cloaca Maxima (clo-a'ca maxi¬ 
ma), the, 152. 


I Clovis (clo'vis), 252. 

Cobden (cdb'den), Richard, 521. 

Code Napoleon, 436-7. 

Coinage, see Money. 

Colchis (col'chisj, map after p. 
70. 

Cologne (ko-lon'), map after 218. 

Colosseum, the, Plate after 228. 

Columbus, Christopher, and Amer¬ 
ica, 327. 

Combat, Trial by, 249. 

Commerce, early routes, Egyptian, 
17-8; of Euphrates States, 35 ; 
Phoenician, 46-7; and inven¬ 
tion of coinage, 41; and Greek 
geography, 69-70, 84-5; Ro¬ 
man, 150, 171, 180, 184, 219- 
23; growth in Europe after 
Crusades, 297-8; review of 
in Middle Ages, 358-62; growth 
after Columbus, 362-4; and 
war danger, see Imperialism. 

Commodus (com'mo-dus), 218. 

Common Law (English), 285. 

Commons, House of, origin, 290; 
see Parliament; Plates facing 
376, 378, and cut on 385. 

Commonwealth, the English, 
378-9. 

Communards (com'mun-ards), 
(Paris), 546-8. 

Compass, the Mariners’, invention 
of, 324. 

Compurgation (com-pur-ga'tion), 
Trial by, 248. 

Conde (kon-da), the Great, and 
Louis XIV, Plate facing 393. 

Confederation of the Rhine, 444. 

Congo Free State, 603. 

“ Conservative,” replaces “ Tory,” 
514; see table, pp. 514-5. 

Constantine, Emperor, and Chris¬ 
tianity, 239-40; and the Nicene 
Creed, 242. 



INDEX 


19 


Constantine VI (Greek Empire), 
260, 261. 

Constantine Palaeologus (pa-lse-o'- 
lo-gtis), 317. 

Constantine I, King of Greece, 
641, 649. 

Constantinople, map after p. 218; 
capital of Greek Empire, 
247; repels Saracens, 254; and 
the Crusades, 295; captured, 
317; goal of Russian ambition, 
396; and Peace Congress, 658, 
Plate facing 614. 

Constitution, term explained, 79. 

Consuls, Roman, 169. 

Continental System (Napoleon’s), 
441 ff. 

Convention of 1793 (the Year I), 
425-9; constructive work, 
428. 

Cooperative agriculture (Den¬ 
mark), 578-9. 

Copernicus (co-per'nf-cus), 357. 

Copocabana (co-po-ca-ba'na), Plate 
facing 619. 

Copper, first use for tools, 6 . 

Corcyra (c 6 r-cy'ra), map after 
p. 70. 

Corinth, and Peloponnesian War, 
124; destroyed by Rome, 187; 
rebuilt by Caesar, 207; map 
after 52. 

Corinthian Order, of architecture, 
72. 

Corn Laws, repeal, 521-2. 

Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, 
192, 194, 196. 

Correggio (kSr- 8 d'jo), 323. 

Corrupt Practices Prevention Act 
(English), 518. 

Cortes (Cor-tS§')> 457. 

Corvee (k 6 r-va), 406. 

Cotton Gin, 468-9. 

Counter-Reformation, 336-8. 


Coup d’etat (coo d&-ta/), term, 
435 and note; Napoleon’s in 
1851, 493. 

Courland, 652; map facing 647 

Covenanters, Scotch, 375. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, 340, 341, 
342. 

Crassus, 200, 201, 202. 

Crecy (kres'sf), Battle of, 306; 
map after p. 290. 

Cretan civilization, ancient, 53 ff.; 
alphabet, 55; see Knossos; 
map after 18 and 52. 

Crimean (cri-me'an) War, 494; 
and Italy, 497. 

Croats, 487, 622; see Jugoslavia. 

Croesus (croe'sus), 41. 

Crompton (cromp'ton), Samuel, 
and the “ mule,” 467-8. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 375-9; Plates 
facing 373, 377. 

Crotona, map after 70. 

Crusades, 294-6; results, 297 ff. 

Cuba, and Spanish-American 
War, 575-6; and World War, 
640. 

Cuneiform script, 36 and Plates 
following. 

Curials (cu'ri-als), Roman, 234. 

Curio, Manius, 170. 

Curule offices, 169. 

Custozza (koos-tSd'za), Battle of, 
490; map after 454. 

Cynic philosophy, 144. 

Cyrene (cy-re'ne), map after p. 70. 

Cyrus “ the Great,” 42, 88 . 

Cyrus the Younger, 129-30. 

Czechoslovakia, 651; map after 
660. 

Czechs (chSks), 486. 

Dacia (da'ci-a), 217; map after 

p. 218. 

Daguerreotypes, 471. 




20 


INDEX 


Damascus (da-m&s'cus), map after 

p. 218 . 

Danelaw (dane'law)(or Danelagh), 
268 and map opposite. 

Danton (dan-ton'), 420-9. 

Dantzig (dant'ziG), 657; map after 
454. 

Darius Codomannus (da-ri'us c6d- 
o-man'us), and Alexander, 136. 

Darius the Organizer, 43^1, 88-9. 

“ Dark Ages,” the, 301. 

Darwin, Charles, 597. 

David, King of the Hebrews, 50. 

Decarchies (d&c'areh-ies), under 
Sparta, 127. 

Decemvirs (de-cSm'virs), Roman, 
159. 

Declaration of Rights (English), 382. 

Declaration of the Rights of Man, 
418. 

Delos (de'los), Confederacy of, 99- 
100 ; island, map after p. 52. 

Delphi, 68; repulse of Gauls from, 
141; map after p. 52. 

Delphic Oracle, 68-9. 

“ Demagogues,” in Athens, term 
explained, 104. 

Demeter (de-me'ter), 65; see Ceres. 

Demosthenes (de-mSs'the-nes), 
orator, 134. 

Denekin (den'e-kln), 664. 

Denmark, 578-9; and Sleswig, 
637 and note. 

Desmoulins (da-moo-l&n'), Camille 
(ka-mel'), 414. 

DeWitt Clinton, the (steam loco¬ 
motive), Plate facing 596. 

Diaz (de-as'), and geographical dis¬ 
covery, 323. 

Diet, German, 331, note; see 
Westphalia , Peace of. 

Diocletian (dl-o-cle'tl-an), Em¬ 
peror, 330-3; persecution of 
Christians by, 239. 


Diogenes (di-5g'g-ne§), 144. 

Dionysius (dl-o-ny'si-us), 226. 

Dionysus (di-o-ny'sus), god of the 
vintage and the drama, 108; 
theater uf,' at Athens, 109 and 
Plate XXI. 

Directory, the French, 430-1, 434- 
5. 

Disestablishment, of the English 
Church, which see. 

Disraeli (dfz-ra'lf), Benjamin, 515, 
517, 523-4. 

Divine Right of Kings, theory of, 
369 ff.; see William II of 
Germany. 

Domesday (domes'day) Book, 280. 

Domestic system, in manufac¬ 
tures, 366. 

Domestication of animals, prehis¬ 
toric, 2, 4, 7; in ancient Egypt, 
17; of plants, 5, 7. 

Dominicans (do-mln'i-cans), 283. 

Domitian, Emperor, 216. 

“ Donation of Pippin,” 258. 

“ Do-Nothing Kings,” the, 253. 

Dorians, 67. 

Doric Order, of architecture, 72. 

Draco (dra'co), laws of, 77. 

Drake, Sir Francis, 349, 389, 
390. 

Drama, Greek, 108-9. 

Drusus (dru'sus), rival of Grac¬ 
chus, 195; champion of the Ital¬ 
ians, 198. 

Dual Alliance, the, 615. 

Ducal Palace (Venice), Plate facing 
322. 

Dumouriez (du-moo-r8-a') 426. 

Dims the Scot, 302; “dunce,” 
303. 

Dunwich (dhn'fch), 507. 

Dutch Republic, see Netherlands; 
rise of, 350; see Holland; map 
after 350. 




INDEX 


21 


East Goths, 245, 248; map after 
248. 

Eastern Empire, see Greek Empire. 

Ebro (e'bro), map after p. 176. 

Ecbatana (gc-ba-tan'a), map fac¬ 
ing 135. 

“ Economics,” term explained, 77, 
note. 

Edfu (ed'fu), Temple at, Plate III. 

Education and learning, in Egypt, 
18-21; in Chaldea, 36-8; in 
Athens, 108-13, 123; under 
Roman Empire, 224-6; de¬ 
cline in 3d and 4th centuries, 
236, 242-3; in “Dark Ages,” 
246; in monasteries, 252; and 
Charlemagne, 262; and Alfred 
the Great, 268; Saracenic, 294- 
5; in 11th century, 301-4; see 
Universities; in Renaissance 
Age, 322-5. 

Edward I, of England and Parlia¬ 
ment, 289. 

Edward II, deposed, 305. 

Edward III, 305 ff. 

Edward VI, 340-1. 

Egbert, of Wessex, 268. 

Egypt, early home of bronze cul¬ 
ture, 6; land and people, 9-11; 
and the Nile, 9-11; map, 10; 
government, 11; social classes 
and daily life, 12-4; trade (bar¬ 
ter), 13, 17, 18; woman in, 14- 
5; “Old Kingdom” (pyra¬ 
mids), 15-6; Middle Kingdom 
(irrigation system), 16; agri¬ 
culture, 16-7; commerce, 17-8; 
artisans, 18; books and writing, 
18-20; science, 20-1; sculp¬ 
ture, 21-2; religion and charac¬ 
ter, 22; and relation to other 
lands, 24 ff.; militarism and fall, 
26-8; under the Ptolemies, 
141-2; conquered by Saracens, 


254; and Napoleon, 434; under 
English control, 539-40; a free 
state, 540. 

Eidvold (eid'vold), Diet at, 579. 

Elba, 447, 451. 

Elbe (el'be), map after p. 260. 

Electoral College, of the Holy 
Roman Empire, 316, 331, note. 

Electricity, Age of, 595. 

Elgin marbles, 107. 

Eliot, Sir John, 371-4. 

Elis (e'lls), map after p. 52. 

Elizabeth, Queen (English), 343- 
7, 349. 

Elizabethan Settlement (of the 

Church), 344. 

Elizabethan Renaissance, 343-4. 

Elizabeth of Russia, 396. 

Emmet, Robert, 526. 

Empire, term explained, 30, note. 

England, see Britain , local insti¬ 
tutions (Saxon), 283; Norman 
Conquest, 283-4; Henry II and 
the courts, 285; growth of Com¬ 
mon Law, ib.; Magna Carta, 
286-7; and Parliament, 287-90; 
and Hundred Years’ War, 305 
ff.; Black Death and disappear¬ 
ance of villeinage, 306-9; peas¬ 
ant rising of 1381, 308; Parlia¬ 
ment under Lancastrians, 309- 
10; Wars of Roses, 311; “ New 
Monarchy ” of the Tudors, 311; 
and Protestant Reformation, 339 
ff.; and Spanish Armada, 346; 
social and economic changes of 
16th century, 364-7; growth of 
manufactures, 366; growth of 
commerce, 366-7; under the 
first Stuarts, 368-77; English 
Puritanism, 368; germs of po¬ 
litical parties, 369-70; germs of 
ministerial responsibility, 371; 
Civil War, 377-8; the Common- 




22 


INDEX 


England ( Continued) 

wealth, 379; the Restoration, 
and the later Stuarts, 380-2; 
Revolution of 1688, 382 ff.; 
ministerial government, 383-4; 
Great Britain, 385; acquisition 
of colonial empire, 389-91; and 
wars of Louis XIV, and Freder¬ 
ick II, which see; and colonial 
growth, 394, 389-91, 399; and 
American Revolution, 400-1; 
and French Revolution, 426 ff.; 
and Napoleon, which see; co¬ 
lonial empire confirmed by Con¬ 
gress of Vienna, 449; and In¬ 
dustrial Revolution, 465 ff.; 
retrogression politically in 18th 
century, 506-9; reform in 19th 
century, 509 ff.; recent reform, 
529-34; colonial empire to¬ 
day, 537-41; and Ireland, which 
see; and World War, 629 ff. 

Epaminondas (e-pam-i-n6n'das), 
131-2. 

Ephesus (eph'e-sus), 67; map 
after p. 52. 

Epic poetry, Greek, 72-3. 

Epictetus (ep-ic-te'tus), slave phi¬ 
losopher, 226. 

Epicureanism (ep-i-cu-re'an-ism), 
144. 

Epicurus (ep-I-cu'rus), 144. 

Epirus (e-pl'rus), map after p. 52. 

Episcopalianism, see England , 
Church of. 

Erasmus (e-ras'mus), 323-4, 329, 
336. 

Eratosthenes (er-a-t5s'thS-ne§), 
keeper of Alexandrian Library, 
146. 

Erechtheum (e-r8ch'the-um), Plate 
facing 130. 

Eretria (e-re'tri-a), 89; map after 
p. 52. 


Esquiline (es'qul-line), map, p. 151. 

Estates General, P'rench, 291. 

Esthonia, 652; map facing 647. 

Ether, see Anesthetics. 

Ethiopia (e-thi-o'pi-a), map, p. 10. 

Etruria (e-tru'ri-a), map after 148 
and on 150. 

Etruscans (e-trtis'cans), 149, 150, 
151, 152. 

Euboea (eu-boe'a), map after 52. 

Eucid (eu'cid), 146. 

Euphrates (eu-phra'tes), 29; map 
after 18. 

Euripides (eu-rip'i-des), 108. 

Evolution, Theory of, 597. 

Excommunication (ex-com-mu-ni- 

ca'tion), 289. 

Experiment, method of, not known 
to Greeks, 112-3. 

Fabian (fa'bl-an) policy, see 

Fabius. 

Fabius (fa'bi-us) (Q. Fabius Maxi¬ 
mus), 176. 

Factory reform (see Industrial 
Revolution), 519-22. 

Fair, the medieval, 359. 

Falconry, 275. 

Favre (favre), Jules (zhul), 545. 

Fenian movement, the, 526. 

Ferdinand of Aragon, 317, 319. 

Ferdinand of Austria, 334. 

Ferdinand of Spain, 457-8. 

Feudalism, causes, 269, 272; 

castles and armor, 271; origin 
of classes and of privileges, 270; 
decentralization, 271-2; private 
wars, 273; and the workers, 
273-6; life of the fighters, 276-7; 
chivalry, 277-9. 

Finland, Swedish, 266-7; ac¬ 
quired by Russia, 396, 449, 591; 
attempts to Russianize, 591; 

| independent, 632, 641. 




INDEX 


23 


Fire-making, 7. 

First Reform Bill (English), 509- 

12 . 

Fitch, John, 470. 

Fiume (fyii'ma), 660; map after 
454. 

Flavian (fla'vi-an) Caesars, 215. 

Florida, 399. 

Foch (f 6 sh), Ferdinand, 648. 

Fortescue (for't€s-eue), Sir John, 
310, 311, 364. 

Forum (fo'rum), the Roman, ori¬ 
gin, 150; map, 151; Caesar’s, 
208 and Plates facing 201 and 
after 212. 

Fourteen Points (Woodrow Wil¬ 
son’s), 645-6, 650. 

France, see Gaul, and Verdun, 
Treaty of; rise of Capetians, 
290-1; growth of territory and 
of royal power, 290-1; and 
Hundred Years’ War, 305-12; 
absolutism, 312; acquires first 
colonial empire, 387-9; charac¬ 
ter of, ib.; Wars of Louis XIV, 
392-4; loss of colonial empire, 
ib.; French Revolution, which 
see; under Napoleon I, which see; 
treaties of 1814, 1815, 447, 448- 
52; “restorations” at Congress 
of Vienna, which see ; Revolution 
of 1830, 461-3; of 1848, 480-5; 
Second Republic, 484-5; Second 
Empire, 492 ff.; espionage and 
despotism, 493-4; and new wars, 
495-6; Franco-Prussian War, 
502-4, 544-5; Third Republic, 
544 ff.; Peace of 1871, 545-6; 
Communards, 546-8; constitu¬ 
tion, 549-52; republicanism con¬ 
firmed, 548-51; local govern¬ 
ment, 551; industries, 552; 
wealth before World War, 552-4; 
small land-holders, 553; ruin of 


World War, 554; second colonial 
Empire, 554-6; kulturkampf, 
556-8; see World War, Washing¬ 
ton Conference. 

Frederick the Wise, 329, 332. 

Frederick I (Prussia), 397. 

Frederick II (the Great), 398-402. 

Frederick William, the Great Elec¬ 
tor, 397. 

Frederick William I, 397-8. 

Frederick William III, 455. 

Frederick William IV, 487-8, 500. 

Free Trade, English, 522. 

French and Indian War, 399. 

French Revolution, 404 ff.; France 
before, 404-10; States General, 
411-2; National Assembly, 412- 
3; and American Revolution, 
412, 414, note; Bastille, 414-5; 
abolition of privilege, 415-6; 
march of the women, 416-7; 
“ emigrants,” 417; constitution 
of 1791, 418-9; peasant land¬ 
holders, 419; and war with 
Europe, 420 ff.; panic, union, 
victory, 422-4; First French 
Republic, 425 ff.; Revolution a 
proselyting religion, 424-5; the 
Terror, 428; constructive work, 
428-9; fall of the Jacobins, 429; 
the Directory, 430 ff.; territorial 
gains to 1795, 432: and Napo¬ 
leon, which see. 

Friars, 283. 

Frieze, in architecture, 72. 

Froissart (frois'art), 307. 

Frontenac (fron-te-nac'), 388-9. 

Fulton, Robert, 470. 

Gades (ga'de§) (Cadiz), Phoenician 
colony, 47; map after 70. 

Galatia (ga-la'ti-a), 141; map 
after 218. 

Galileo (gaH-le'o), 358. 




24 


INDEX 


Gambetta (gam-b8t'ta), 544-5, 557. 

Garibaldi (gar-i-bal'di), 498-9. 

Gauls, invasion of Greek Orient, 
141; in Italy, 149; sack Rome. 
161; Caesar in Gaul, 200-1; see 
Cisalpine Gaul , Roman Empire. 

Geddes (geddes), Jenny, 375. 

“ Generation,’’ a, as measure of 
time, explained, 41, note. 

Geneva, 335 and map opp. 336. 

Genghis (jen'jls) Khan (k/ian), 
395. 

Genoa, absorbed by Sardinia, 452. 

Genucius (gen-u'ci-us), 161. 

Geography, and history, in Egypt, 
9-11,20; in Chaldea, 29, 35; in 
Hellas, 53, 61, 67, and especially 
84-6; in Italy and with Rome, 
148-51; discoveries at close of 
Middle Ages, 322-7. 

Geology, 596-7. 

Geometry, Egyptian, 20; Chal¬ 
dean, 37; Greek, 74, 146. 

George I (England), 384. 

George II, 384. 

George III, 508-9. 

German Empire (1871-1918), see 
Germany, Prussia, North Ger¬ 
man Confederation; making of, 
500-5; federal, 559; autocracy 
and militarism, 559-61; junkers, 
561; capitalists, 561-2; growth 
of cities in, 562, note; army, 
562-3; kulturkampf, 563-5; 
socialism, 564-5; and the border 
peoples, 566; colonial empire, 
566-9; dream of Mittel-Europa 
empire, 567-8; prevents dis¬ 
armament at Hague Conferences, 
617, 619; and Turkey, 623; 
and Balkan wars, 624-6; army 
bill of 1913, 626; “ wills the 
war,” 626; effect of militarism 
upon, 626-8; see World War, 


Peace Congress, and German 
Republic. 

German Indemnity, problems of 

the, 658-9. 

German Reformation, the, 329- 
34. 

German Republic, 651, 656-7. 
Germanic Confederation, 454 ff.; 

see North German Confederation. 
Germany, see Teutons, Franks, and 
Charlemagne; and Treaty of 
Verdun, 265 and map opposite; 
expansion into Slav East, 292 
and map; and Otto I (close of 
barbarian invasions), 292; and 
Holy Roman Empire, 292-3 . 
decline of German kingship and 
political chaos, 293, 315-6; 

Protestant Reformation, 329- 
34; ruin in Thirty Years’ 
War, 354-5; see Austria, Prus¬ 
sia, and maps after 302, 314; 
Napoleon's new map of, 443-4; 
social reform in (Napoleon), 
444-5; and Congress of Vienna, 
which see; Germanic Confeder¬ 
ation, which see; Revolution of 
1848, 487-8; see North German 
Confederation, German Empire, 
and German Republic. 

Gibraltar, 394; Plate facing 576. 
Gilbert, 389, 401. 

Gilds (gilds), Roman, 171, 221, 
234-5; medieval, 229-30; be¬ 
come hindrances to progress, 
362, 366-7; disappear from 

England early, 366. 

Giorgione (jSr-jo'ne), 323. 
Girondists, 420, 426-7. 

Gizeh (ge'zgh), map, 10. 

Gladiators, 186. 

Gladstone, William Evarts, 515, 

and passim to 529; 623. 

Gogol (go'gSl), 588. 



INDEX 


25 


Gorky (gor'ky), 664. 

Goshen (gosh'en), Land of, 48-9. 

Goths, see East Goths and West 
Goths. 

Gothic architecture, 304 and cuts 
and Plates, 288, 318 and after 
304 and 313. 

Gracchus, Caius (grac'chus, cai- 
us), 194-6. 

Gracchus, Tiberius, 192-4. 

Graeco-Oriental (grce'co) World, 
the, 137 ff.; Hellenism of the 
active element, 137-8; the many 
Alexandrias in, 138; wealth, 
139; scientific expeditions, 139; 
Wars of the Succession, 140; 
resemblance to modern Europe, 
140-1; Gallic invasion, 141; 
society and culture, 141-7. 

Granada, fall, 317. 

Grand Jury, origin, 285. 

Granicus (gra-ni'cus), Battle of, 
136; map after p. 134. 

“ Great Britain, ” 385. 

Great Western, the, 471. 

Greek Church, the, separation from 
Latin, 255-6. 

Greek contributions to civilization 

(summary), 147. 

Greek Empire (or Eastern Em¬ 
pire), 247-8, 255-7; and Charle¬ 
magne, 260-1; threatened by 
Turks, 295; and Crusades, ib.; 
overthrown by Turks, 317. 

Greek home life, in age of Pericles, 
116-23. 

Greek language, recovery of, in 
closing Middle Ages, 317, 322-3. 

Greek philosophy, 6th century, 
73-4; in age of Pericles, 110-2; 
in Alexandrian age, 143-4. 

Greek religion, 64-6; moral side, 
114-5. 

Greek theater, 108-9. 


Greeks, the, and Ancient Egypt, 
27; prehistoric culture, 53 ff.; 
Cretan, 53-6; Mycenae “rich 
in gold,” 56-7; Achaean, 58; 
fusion with earlier culture, 
60 ff.; city-state, 61-2; Ho¬ 
meric society, 62 ff.; religion, 
64-6; Dorian conquest, 67; 
1000-500 b.c., 68 ff.; expansion 
by colonization, 69-70 and map 
after 70; disappearance of Ho¬ 
meric kingship, 74; art and phi¬ 
losophy of 6 th century, 71-3; 
“Age of Tyrants,” 74; rise of 
democracy at Athens, 75-81; 
Spartan training and military 
leadership, 81-3; geography, 
and contrast with Oriental 
States, 84-7; Persian Wars , 
which see; Athenian leader¬ 
ship, see Athens; Spartan lead¬ 
ership, see Sparta; Theban 
leadership, 131-2; Macedonian 
conquest, 133; failure of city 
state, 132-3; in the Orient with 
Alexander and after, see Graeco- 
Oriental World; contributions 
to civilization, 147; see Athens, 
Macedonia, Rome; modern 
Greece — war for independence, 
458, 460; and other Balkan 
peoples, 621; see World War, 
and Balkans. 

Green, John Richard ( English 
People), forbidden in Russia, 
590. 

Greene (dramatist), 344. 

Gregory the Great, Pope, and 
England, 268. 

Gregory VII, Pope (Hildebrand), 
282. 

Gregory XI, Pope, 314. 

Grey (Earl), and Parliamentary 
reform, 510-2. 





26 


INDEX 


Guillotine, the, 428 and note. 

Guizot (ge-zo'), 461, 480-2. 

Gunpowder, invention of, and early 
use, 302, 305; later improve¬ 
ments and importance, 324. 

Gustavus Adolphus (gus-ta'vus 
a-dol'phus), 354 and Plate opp. 

Gutenberg (goot'6n-b£rG), John, 
325. 

Haakon (hank'on) VII, 581. 

Habeas Corpus, 287, 381. 

Hadrian, Emperor, 217; mau¬ 
soleum of, Plate after 246. 

Hadrian’s Wall, 217 and note, and 
map after p. 218. 

Hague Peace Conferences, 616-7. 

Haig (haig), Sir Douglas, 647. 

Hakluyt (hak'luyt), Richard, Plate 
facing 389. 

Halicarnassus (hal-i-car-nas'sus), 
map after p. 52. 

Hamburg (ham'biirG), 454-5. 

Hamilcar Barca (ha-mll'car bar'- 
ca), 175. 

Hammurapi (ham-mu-ra'pi), of 
Babylon, 31; laws of, 35-6. 

Hampden (hamp'den), John, 372, 
374, 375, 378. 

Hanging Gardens, at Babylon, 
39. 

Hannibal (han'ni-bal), 175-80; 
route, map after 176. 

Hanseatic (h&n-se-&t'ic) League, 
300 and map after p. 302. 

Hapsburg (haps'burG), the, 315-6, 
319 ; two branches, 334. 

Harding, President, and Washing¬ 
ton Conference, 667. 

Hargreaves, James, and the 
“ Jenny,” 466-7. 

Harold, the Saxon, 284. 

Harvey, William, and the circula¬ 
tion of the blood, 344, 357-8. 


Hasdrubal (has'dru-bal), the Bar- 
cide, 179. 

Hasedera (has-e-de'ra), Plate fac¬ 
ing 606. 

Hastings, Battle of, 284. 

Hathor, Egyptian deity, Plates 
III, VIII. 

Hay, John, 609. 

“ Heathen,” 241, note. 

Hebrews, Semites, 30, note; 
early history to the Exodus, 
48-9; under the Judges, 49; 
Kings and Prophets, 49; David 
and Solomon, 50-1; division 
and decline, 51; Assyrian cap¬ 
tivity, 51; Babylonian captiv¬ 
ity, 51; return to Palestine, 51; 
priestly rule, 52; and our Old 
Testament, ib.; mission, 52; 
province of Roman Empire, 215 ; 
destruction and dispersion, 215 ; 
see Jerusalem; proposal to re¬ 
store, 658. 

Hegira (he-gi'ra), the, 254. 

Hejaz (he'jaz), Kingdom of, 658. 

Hellas (hSl'las), 84. 

Hellenes (hel'enz), term explained, 
84. 

Hellenism and Hellenistic, terms 
compared, 140, note. 

Hellespont (hel'es-pont), the, map 
after p. 52. 

Helot (he'lot), 82. 

Helvetii (hel-ve'ti-I), 201-2. 

Henry II (England), 285. 

Henry III, 289. 

Henry IV, 303. 

Henry VII, 311. 

Henry VIII, 311, 339-40. 

Henry IV (France), 352-3. 

Henry of Navarre, see Henry IV 
of France. 

Henry the Navigator, 323. 

Hephaestus (he-ph£es'tus), 65. 




INDEX 


27 


Hera (he'ra), 65. 

Herculaneum (her-cu-la'ne-um), 
216. 

Heresies, early Christian, 241-2. 

Hermes (her'meg), 65; statue by 
Praxiteles, 126. 

Hermits, Christian, 251. 

Herodotus (he-rod'o-tus), quoted 
on pyramids, 15; on Neco’s 
circumnavigation of Africa, 27; 
on Persian morals, 45; place in 
literature, 86, 109. 

Hesiod (he'si-od), 73. 

Hiero (hl'e-ro) II, 177. 

Hieroglyphics (hl-er-o-glyph'ics), 
Egyptian, 18-9; Chaldean, 
36-7. 

Hipparchus (hip-par'chus), philos¬ 
opher, 146. 

Hipparchus, tyrant, 80. 

Hippias (hlp'pl-as), tyrant, 80. 

Hiram of Tyre, and Solomon, 
50. 

Hittites (hit'tites), and Egyptians, 
27; iron weapons of, 27, 31; 
maps, 50 and after 18, 38. 

Hogarth (ho'garth), William, cut 
on p. 385 and facing 384 ; 
on 508 and facing 507. 

Hohenlinden (ho-/i8n-hn'd6n), Bat¬ 
tle of, 435. 

Holbein (hol'bein), 323. 

Holland, see Netherlands; and 
Philip II, 348; rebellion, 348- 
51; independence recognized, 
355; wars with Louis XIY, 
392-3; decline, 399; see French 
Revolution , Batavian Republic , 
and Napoleon; “ Kingdom of 
Holland,” 442; annexed to 
France, 443; Kingdom of the 
Netherlands, 449; and Belgium, 
449, 463. 

Holy Alliance, the, 458-9, 463. 


Holy Roman Empire, see Charle¬ 
magne; revival of Roman Em¬ 
pire in the West by Otto; effect 
on Germany and on Italy, 293, 
315 ff.; and the Hapsburgs, 316; 
and Peace of Westphalia, 355; 
a shadow, ended by Napoleon, 
444. 

Home Rule (Irish), struggle for, 
see Ireland. 

Homeric Poems, 58, 68, 79; re¬ 
duced to writing, 79. 

Hoplites (hop'lltes), Greek heavy¬ 
armed infantry, 124. 

Horace, Latin poet, 187, 225, 
226. 

Horus (ho'rus), Egyptian deity, 
Plates III, VIII. 

Houses, Egyptian, 12, 14; in 

primitive Aegean civilization, 
53; in age of Pericles, 116-7; 
early Roman, 152-3; Roman 
about 200 Bic., 172; after Punic 
Wars, 185 and Plates after 171, 
188; in feudal age, 270-1, 274. 

Howe (sewing machine), 472. 

Hughes, Charles Evans, 667. 

Huguenots, 336, 366, 393, 397. 

“ Hun,” 634. 

Hungarians, nomad raids, 266; 
checked by Otto, 292. 

Hungary, see Hungarians; be¬ 
comes a Christian kingdom, 292; 
and the Turks, 317; a Haps- 
burg province, 316; and Revolu¬ 
tion of '48, 486-7; see Austria- 
Hungary; since the World War, 
651. 

Hus, John, 314-5. 

Hyksos (hyk'sSs), the, 25, 49. 

Hymettus (hy-m6t'tus), map, p. 
94. 

Hyphasis (hy'pha-sis) River, map 
after p. 134. 




28 


INDEX 


Iconoclastic (i-con-o-clas'tic) dis¬ 
pute, the, 256. 

Ikhnaton (ik-Ana'ton), and his 
hymn, 22-3. 

Iliad (il'i-ad), the, 58. 

Imbros (im'bros), map after p. 
70. 

Immortality, belief in, prehistoric 
man, 3; Egyptian, 23-4; Per¬ 
sian, 45; Greek, 66 ; and see 
Socrates. 

Imperator (im-per-a'tor), title, 205. 

“ Imperialism,” and trade, 601- 
604; and danger of war, 620. 

Inclosures (English), 16th century, 
364-5; 18th century, 534-5. 

Independents (in religion), English, 
see Separatists; and the Long 
Parliament, 377-9. 

India, French and English rivalry 
for, 398-9; under English rule, 
588-9; and the World War, 
632. 

Indirect taxes, term explained, 406, 
note. 

Indo-China, French seizures in, 
556. 

Indulgences, Papal, and the Refor¬ 
mation, 329-30. 

Industrial panic, 1815-1819, 509- 

10 . 

Industrial Revolution, 18th cen¬ 
tury, 465-70; and factory sys¬ 
tem, 473 ff.; and growth of cities, 
474-6; and Manchester doc¬ 
trine, 476-7; and Socialism, 
which see; recent developments 
— age of electricity, 595 - 7 ; 
and consolidation of capital, 
598-9. 

Infantry, early meaning, 271. 

Innocent III, Pope, 337. 

Inquisition, the (Spanish), 337-8. 

Interdict, the, 289. 


Ionia, Athenian -colonization of, 
67; early center bf art and phi¬ 
losophy, 72; map after 52. 

Ionic Order, see Architecture. 

Iran (e-ran'), Plateau of, 66 ; map 
after p. 38. 

Ireland, schools in Dark Ages, 301 ; 
history to 1600, 346-7; and 
famine of 1846, 521-2; English 
Church disestablished, 523; 
brief story of from Elizabeth 
to 1800, 525-6; Rebellion of 
’98, 526; Emmet’s Rebellion, 
526; Act of Union, 526; Young 
Ireland, 526; Fenian movement, 
526; English Church disestab¬ 
lished, 526; land reforms, 527, 
528; Home Rule struggle, 527- 
8 ; rise of Sinn Fein movement, 
528; Home Rule Bill of 1914, 
531; suspended, 532; and the 
World War, 532; since, 532-3; 
“ Free State,” 533. 

Irene (i-rene')> Empress, 260. 

Iron, known to early Hittites, 27, 
31; to Achaeans, 58; cast iron, 
470; see Bessemer steel. 

Ironsides, Cromwell’s, 377. 

Isabella of Castille, 317, 327. 

Isis (I'sis), Egyptian deity, Plate 
VIII. 

Iskandar (is-kan-dar'), map after 
134. 

Isocrates (i-soc'ra-tes), 133. 

Israel, Kingdom of, 51; see He¬ 
brews; map, 50. 

Issus (is'sus), Battle of, 136; map 
after p. 134. 

Italian War of 1859 , 495. 

Italy, map after p. 148; Greek col¬ 
onies in, see Magna Graecia; 
land and peoples, 148-9; see 
Rome, Goths, Lombards; divided 
between Teutons and Empire, 




INDEX 


29 


248; see Papacy, Franks; and 
Holy Roman Empire, 292-3; 
in fragments in 13th century, 
293,319; see Renaissance; loses 
leadership in trade after Colum¬ 
bus, 386; Napoleon’s campaigns 
in, 432-3; new map of, 443; 
and Congress of Vienna, 448, 
452; Revolution of 1820 and 
1830, see Sardinia and Sicily; 
Revolution of ’48, 489-91; from 
’48 to ’59, 496-7; War of ’59, 
495, 497-8; growth of out of 
Sardinia, 498-9; acquires Rome, 
505; constitution, 570; colonial 
empire, 571-2; the Irridentists, 
571-2; and the Popes, 572; 
and World War, which see; 
entrance, 632; military collapse, 
642; victory on the Piave, 649; 
gains at Versailles, 657-8 and 
map p. 660. 

Ithaca (ith'a-ca), map after 52. 

Ivan (e'van) the Terrible, 395. 

Ivry (iv'ry), Battle of, 352. 

Jacobins (French Revolution), 
420 ff. 

James I (England), 339, 369-71. 

James II, 381-2. 

Janiculum (ja-nic'u-lum), Mount, 
152; map, 151. 

Janus (ja'nus), 153; gates of 
temple closed by Augustus, 211, 
214. 

Japan, medieval rumors of, in Eu¬ 
rope, 325; discussion of, 604 ff.; 
Westernized, 604-5; expansion, 
605; war with China, 605; 
robbed of fruits of victory by 
Russia, 605; gains, 605-6; war 
with Russia, 609-12; and World 
War, 623; seizes Shantung, ib.; 
and Peace Conference, which see; 


in Siberia, 665; and Washington 
Conference, 667-9. 

Jaxartes (jax-ar'te§), the, map 
after p. 134. 

Jay Treaty, and arbitration, 616. 

Jemmappes (zhem-m&p'), Battle 
of, 424. 

Jena (ya'na), Battle of, 440; 

map facing 502. 

Jephthah (jgph'thah), 49. 

Jerusalem, 51; map, 50; de¬ 
struction by Titus, 215; patriar¬ 
chate of, 225; becomes Moham¬ 
medan, 254, 256; see Crusades; 
maps after 218 and on p. 50; 
Saracenic walls of, Plate after 294. 

Jesuits, 337. 

Jews, see Hebrews; and “ bank¬ 
ing ” in Middle Ages, 361 and 
note; treatment in modem 
Russia, 590. 

Jingo, term explained, 524, note. 

Joan of Arc, see Arc, Joan. 

John, of England, 286. 

Jonson (jon'son), Ben, 344. 

Joseph, the Hebrew, 48. 

Joshua, 49. 

Judah, Kingdom of, 80; map, 50; 
see Hebrews. 

Jugglers, medieval, 277. 

Jugoslavia, 652, and map, ib. 

Julian Caesars, the, 215, note. 

Jung Deutschland, quoted on war, 
627-8. 

Juno (ju'no), 65. 

Jupiter, 65, 154. 

Jury, the Athenian, 105-6. 

Jury, the modern system of trial 
by, 285, 288. 

Jury, Grand, 285. 

Justinian (jus-tln'i-an) the Great, 
247-8. 

Justinian Code, the, 248. 

Juvenal (ju'vSn-al), 185, 226. 








30 


INDEX 


Kandahar (kan-da-har), map after 
p. 134. 

Karlsbad (karls'bad), Decrees of, 
455-6; map facing 502. 

Karnak (kar'nak), temple at, 12 and 
Plate IV after 12; map, p. 10. 

Kenilworth Castle, Plate facing 343. 

Kerensky (ker-ens'ky), 641-2. 

Khedive (ke-dev'), 539. 

Khufu (ku'fu), 15. 

Kiel Canal, 569, 628; map after 
558. 

Kiev, 394; map after 610. 

King William’s War, 393. 

Kitchen utensils in Ancient Crete, 
55. 

Knighthood, see Chivalry. 

Knights of St. John, 296. 

Knights Templar, 296. 

Knights, Teutonic, 296; in eastern 
Europe, map after 302. 

Knossos (knos'sos), Palace of, 
54-5; map after 18, 52. 

Knox, John, 345. 

Kolchak (kol'chak), 664. 

Koran (ko-ran'), the, 254. 

Korea (ko-re'a), 605, 611. 

Kosciusko (kos-ci-us'ko), 401. 

Kossova (kos-so'va), Battle of, 
317. 

Kossuth (k6s-sut^'), 487. 

Kotzebue (kotz'8-biie), 455. 

Kremlin (krem'lin), the, Plate fac¬ 
ing 588. 

Kulturkampf (kul'tttr-kampf), in 
France, 556-8; in Germany, 
563-5. 

Kwangchowan (kwang'chow-an), 
608. 

Labor unions (English), 516, 523. 

Lacedaemonians (lac-e-dse-mo'ni- 
ans), see Sparta; map after 52; 
term explained, 98, note. 


Lacroix (la-crwaO, a French au¬ 
thority upon medieval times, 
271 and elsewhere. 

Lafayette (in French Revolution), 
412, 415, 416, 420, 423; and 
Second Revolution, 462. 

“ Laissez faire,” 477. 

Lamartine (lam-ar-tine'), 482-3. 

Lancastrians, growth of Parliament 
under, 309-10. 

LaSalle (la-saFe'), 387. 

Latimer (lat'i-mer), Hugh, 342. 

Latin colonies, 165. 

Latin Language, in Middle Ages, 
303. 

Latium (la'ti-um), 149; map after 
p. 148 and on 150. 

Latvia (lat'vi-a), 652, and map 
after 660. 

Laud, Archbishop, 374, 375. 

Lavoisier (la-wa-si-a'), 408. 

League of Nations, 605-6, 661-2. 

Lebanon Mountains, map on p. 50. 

Lechfeld (lgK'fSlt), Battle of, 292. 

Legion, the Roman, 167-8. 

Leipzig (lip'ziG), Battle of, 447; 
map after 454. 

Lemnos (lem'nos), map after p. 52. 

Lenin (la-nen'), Nikolai (nik'o-lai), 
642, 664. 

Leo III, and Charlemagne, 260. 

Leo the Isaurian, 256. 

Leonardo (la-o-nar'do) da Vinci (da 
vin'che), 323. 

Leonidas (le-on'i-das), 93. 

Lesbos (les'bos), 157; map after 
52. 

“ Letters of the Seal,” 407. 

Leuctra (leuc'tra), Battle of, and 
plan, 131. 

Leuthen (leu'then), Battle of, 399; 
map facing 398. 

Leyden (ley'den), Relief of, 350; 
map facing 350, 



INDEX 


31 


Liaou Yang, Battle of, 610. 

Libations, in Greek worship, 64. 

Liberal, name replaces Whig, 514; 
table of administrations, 514-5. 

Liberia, 603. 

Libraries, Babylonian, 36-7; in 
Graeco-Oriental World, as at 
Alexandria, 145-6. 

Lichnowsky (lich-nows'ky), Prince, 
and proof of German guilt in 
causing the World War, 628 and 
note, 629. 

Licinian laws, the, 160-1. 

Licinius (li-cin'i-us), Emperor, 240. 

Ligurians (li-gu'ri-ans), map after 
148. 

Liris (li'ris), the, map after 148. 

Lithuania, 646, 652; map, 652. 

Livy, 226; quoted passim. 

Lloyd George, 529; budget of 
1909, 529-31; and Irish Free 
State, 533; and Peace Congress, 
653-4. 

Lollards, the, 307, 314. 

Lombard bankers, medieval, 361-2. 

Lombards, 248, 257, 258, 259; 
map after 260. 

Long, Crawford W., 472. 

Lords, House of, and First Reform 
Bill, 511-2; reformed (veto), 
529-31. 

Louis IX, of France, 290. 

Louis XI, 312. 

Louis XIII, 353. 

Louis XIV, 392-4. 

Louis XV, 407, 410. 

Louis XVI, 410, 422-3, 425. 

Louis XVIII, 447, 451, 461. 

Louis Philippe (phil-ippe'), 463, 
480-2. 

Louvre (loovr), art museum in 
modern Paris. 

Loyola, Ignatius, 337. 

Lucretius (lu-cre'ti-us), 226. 


Lusitania, the, 637. 

Luther, Martin, 329-34. 

Lutheran Church, the, 333, 334. 

Lycurgus (ly-cur'gus), 81. 

Lydia (lyd'i-a), map after 38; and 
coinage, 41. 

Lyell, Sir Charles, 596. 

Lyons, map after p. 218. 

Lyric Age, in Greece, 73. 

Lysander (ly-sSn'der), the Spartan, 
127. 

Macadamized roads, 466. 

Macaulay, on French war methods 
in time of Louis XIV, Plate fac¬ 
ing 392. 

McCormick reapers, 471 and Plate 
facing 476. 

Macedonia (mac-e-do'ni-a), map 
after 52; rise of, 132-3; and 
Philip II, 132-4; see Alexander. 

McKinley, President, and arbi¬ 
tration, 616. 

MacMahon (mac-ma-/ion), Presi¬ 
dent of France, 549, 550. 

Maelius Spurius (mie'li-us, spu'- 
ri-us), 159. 

Magenta (ma-geft'ta), Eattle of, 
495; map after 454. 

Magna Carta, 286-7. 

Magna Graecia, 70; map after 
p. 70. 

Magyars (mod'yorz), see Hungary. 

Mahomet (ma-hom'et) the Con¬ 
queror, 317. 

Majuba (ma-ju'ba) Hill, Battle of, 
342. 

Malplaquet (mal-pla-ka/), Battle 
of, 393. 

Manchester Political Economy, 

476-7. 

Manchuria, northern part becomes 
Russian, 586; Chinese Man¬ 
churia and Russia, 609, 611. 




32 


INDEX 


“ Mandatories,” and former Ger¬ 
man colonies, 656-7. 

Manlius (man'li-us), Marcus, 159, 
161. 

Manor, feudal, 273-5. 

Mansfeld, 354. 

Mantinea (man-ti-ne'a), broken 
into villages by Sparta, 130; 
restored by Epaminondas, 132; 
battle of, 132; map after 52. 

Marat (ma-raP), 420-1. 

Marathon, Battle of, 88-91; maps, 
94 and after 52. 

March of the Ten Thousand, 129- 
30. 

Mardonius (mar-do'ni-us), 95-6. 

Marengo (ma-rgn'go), Battle of, 
435; map after 454. 

Maria Theresa (t/i8-re'sa), 395. 

Marie Antoinette (an-twa-nSt'), 
410. 

Marius (ma'rl'-us), 197-9. 

Marlborough (marl'bor-ough), 393. 

Marlowe (mar'lowe), dramatist, 
344. 

Marne, Battle of, 631; map fac¬ 
ing 647. 

Marston Moor, Battle of, 377. 

Martin V, Pope, 315. 

Marx, Karl, 477-8. 

Mary Tudor, 339, 341-2. 

Mary of Burgundy, 319 and Plate 
facing p. 316. 

Massilia (mas-sil'i-a), map after 70. 

Maurice (mau'rice), of Saxony, 
Plate facing 334. 

Max, Prince, of Baden, 649. 

Maximilian, of Mexico, 495-6. 

Maximilian I, Emperor, 316, and 
Plate facing p. 316. 

Mayfields, 251, 261. 

Mazzini (mat-ze'ne), 489-91. 

Mecca (mgc'ca), 253; map after 
134. 


Medes (medes), the, 41; map after 
38. 

Medicine, and biology, 597-8; 

see Anesthetics. 

Megalopolis (meg-a-lop'o-lis), 132. 

Megara (meg'a-ra), map after 
52. 

Melius Spurius (me'li-us spu'rl-us), 
159. 

Memnon (mgm'non), Colossi of, 
Plate after 27. 

Memphis, in Egypt, map, 10. 

Men-at-arms, 271. 

Menes (me'nes), of Egypt, 11. 

Mercantile theory (Political 
Economy), 367. 

Merovingians (mer-o-vln'ji-ans), 
rulers of the House of Clovis, 

. Empire of, map after 252. 

Mesopotamia (mes-o-po-ta'mi-a), 
29, 658; map after 18. 

Messene (mSs-se'ne), 132; map 
after 52. 

Messenia (mes-se'ni-a), map after 
52. 

Metaurus (me-tau'rus), Battle of, 
179; map after 176. 

Metric system, of weights and 
measures, devised and adopted 
in French Revolution, 429. 

Metropolis (of a Greek colony; 
mother city), 70. 

Metropolitan (met-ro-pol'i-tan), 

see Archbishop. 

Metternich (m6t'ter-niK), 452, 
453-4 and ff., 485. 

Metz, 334, 545; Cathedral, Plate 
after 304; map after 454. 

Mexico, and Napoleon III, 495-6. 

Micah (ml'cah), Hebrew prophet, 
denunciation of greed of wealth, 
51. 

Michael Angelo (mi'kel an'je-lo), 
323. 



INDEX 


33 


“ Middle Ages,” the, 321. 

Milan, map after 210; Edict of, 
240. 

Miletus (mil-e'tus), map after 52; 
founded, 67; colonies, 70. 

Militarism, Prussian army system, 
500-1; and Germany, 562-3; 
in Europe, 615-6; access in 
1913, 626; effect upon German 
people, 626-8. 

Miltiades (mil-ti'a-des), 90.' 

Milton, John, 380 and Plate fac¬ 
ing 373. 

Milvian (mil'vi-an) Bridge, Battle 
of, 239. 

Ministerial government, see Cab¬ 
inet government. 

Minnesingers (min'ne-sing-ers), 
304. 

Minos (mi'nos), of Crete, 53. 

Mirabeau (mir-a-bo'), 413-7. 

Missals, illuminated, 304. 

Mithridates (mith-ri-da'tes) VI, 
199. 

Mittel-Europa, 624, 632-3; map 
on 643. 

Mohammed (mo-ham'med), 253-4. 

Mohammedanism, 245, 253-5; see 
Saracens , Turks; culture in 11th 
century, 294-5. 

Monasticism (mon-as'ti-cism), 
251-2; monasteries dissolved in 
England by Henry VIII, 340. 

Money, no coinage in ancient 
Egypt, 17; invention of coin¬ 
age, 41; early Roman, 171; 
under Empire, drain to the East, 
235, 236; lack in Middle Ages, 
272, 361; increase of, undermines 
feudalism, 297; and “usury” 
and banking, 361; see Mercan¬ 
tile theory; European currencies 
demoralized after World War, 
666 , 


Money power in politics, in Roman 

Republic, 183-4; in the Empire, 
232, 233; and the German 
Empire of 1871-1918, 561-2. 
Monroe Doctrine, the, and Holy 
Alliance, 459-60; and Napoleon 
III, 495-6. 

Montenegro (mon-te-ne'gro), 622. 
Montfort (mont'fort), Simon of, 
289. 

Moreau (mo-ro'), 435. 

More, Sir Thomas, 324, 340, 341, 
365. 

Morgarten, Battle of, 335; map 
facing 336. 

Moriscoes (mo-ris'coes), expelled 
from Spain, 351-2. 

Morocco, 555-6. 

Moscow, burning of, 446; Napo¬ 
leon’s retreat from, 446 and 
Plate opp. 

Moses, and the Exodus, 49. 
Mountain, the, in French Revolu¬ 
tion Assemblies, 420. 

Mount Blanc, Plate facing 582. 
Moustier (moos'ti-a), Le, and 
Stone Age remains, Plate after 

p. 2. 

Muhlberg (mu/d'berg), Battle of, 

Plate facing 334. 

Mukden (muk'dSn), Battle of, 
610. 

Munitions, sale of, in war by 
neutrals, 635-6. 

Murat (mii-ra'), 443. 

Museum, Plato’s, at Athens, 145; 

Ptolemy’s, at Alexandria, 145-6. 
Muskets, invention of, 354. 

Mycale (myc'a-16), Battle of, 99; 
map after 52. 

Mycenae (my-ce'nse), 56-7; map 
after 52. 

Myron, Greek sculptor, 122 and 
Plate after 184, 



34 


INDEX 


Nahum (na/hum), on fall of As¬ 
syria, 32. 

Nantes (nantes), Edict of, 352-3; 
revocation, 393; Carrier at, 428; 
maps of France. 

Naples (a political state), see 
Sicily; Kingdom of, 443; Rev¬ 
olution of 1820, 458; and of 
1848, 490; and Kingdom of 
Italy, 498. 

Napoleon I, as Bonaparte, saves 
Directory, 430-1; campaigns 
in Italy, 432-3; character, 433; 
in Egypt, 434; overthrows 
Directory, 435; First Consul, 
435 ff.; restores prosperity, 
436; code, 436; Emperor, 438; 
espionage and despotism, 438- 
9; and wars, 439 ff.; greatest 
power, 445; new map of Eu¬ 
rope, 442-4; invasion of Russia, 
445-6; fall, 446-7; re¬ 
turn from Elba, 451; Water¬ 
loo, 451; Plates from 445 to 
451. 

Napoleon II, 493. 

Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon 
President of Second Republic, 
484-5; Emperor, 492 ff.; and 
Bismarck, 502; fall, 502-4; and 
Indo-China, 556. 

Napoleonic Code, the, 436-7. 

Naseby (nase'by), Battle of, 377. 

National Workshops (French, in 
’48), 483-4. 

Nationality, term explained, 453. 

Naucratis (nau-cra'tis), Greek col¬ 
ony in Egypt, 27; map, 10. 

Naupactus (nau-pac'tus), map 
after 52. 

Nausicaa (nau-sic'a-a), 63. 

“Naval Holiday,’’ established by 
the Washington Conference, 
667-8, 


Navarino (nav-a-re'no), Battle of, 
460. 

Naxos (nax'os), 100; map after 
52. 

Nearchus (ne-ar'chus), 139; route 
of, map after 134. 

Nebuchadnezzar (neb-u-chad-nez'- 
zar), 33. 

Necker, 411 ff. 

Neco (ne'co), of Egypt, 27. 

Nelson, Admiral, 434, 440-1. 

Nero, Emperor, 213-4. 

Nerva (ner'va), Emperor, 217. 

Netherlands, 317-9; rebellion of 
16th century, 348; see Belgium 
and Holland. Map facing 336. 

New England Primer, 390. 

Newfoundland, becomes English, 
394. 

“New Monarchy,” Tudor, 311. 

New Orleans, 387. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 408. 

New Zealand, 541. 

Nicaea (ni-cse'a) map after 218; 
Council of, 242. 

Nice (nes), seized by France, 424; 
annexed by plebiscite, 432; 
restored to Savoy, 449; re¬ 
gained by France, 495. 

Nicene (ni'cene) Creed, the, his¬ 
tory of, 242. 

Nicholas I (Russia), 463, 588. 

Nicholas II, 590-1; and Hague 
Congress, 616 ; fall, 641. 

Nicholas V, Pope, 315. 

Nicias (nic'i-as), 126. 

Nile, the, map, p. 10; Battle of, 
435. 

Nimes (nem), Aqueduct of, 220. 

Nineveh (nin'e-veh), 49; maps 
after 18, 38. 

Normal Schools, adopted by 
French Revolutionists, 420. 

Normandy, 267; map after 290. 



INDEX 


35 


Norseman, 266. 

North German Confederation, 

1867-71, 502, 503; see German 
Empire. 

Norway, handed to Sweden by 
Congress of Vienna, 450; wins 
self-government and independ¬ 
ence, 579-81. 

Norwich (nor'wich), Cathedral of, 
304. 

Novara (no-va'ra), Battle of, 490 
and map after 454. 

Nova Scotia, becomes English, 
394. 

Novgorod (nov'go-rbd), 394; map 
after 302. 

O’Connell, Daniel, 526. 

Octavius Caesar, 209-12; see 
Augustus. 

Odysseus (o-dys'seus), 62, 63, 64, 

66 . 

Odyssey (od'ys-sey), 59 ff. 

Old Age Pensions (English), 531. 

Old Sarum (sa'rum), 507. 

Oligarchy, defined, 62, note. 

Olmutz (ol'mutz), humiliation of 
Prussia at, 488; map after 
454. 

Olympia, map after 52; games at, 
68; Stadium, Plate after 68. 

Olympiad, 68. 

Olympic Games, 68. 

Olympus, map after 52. 

Olynthus (o-lyn'thus), map after 
52. 

Orange Free State, 542. 

Ordeal, Trial by, 248-9. 

Orleans, map after 290. 

Oscar II (Sweden), 580-1. 

Osiris, Egyptian deity, Plate VIII. 

Ostia, 1st Roman Colony, 152; 
map, 150. 

Ostracism (os'tra-cism), 81. 


Ostrogoths (os'tro-goths), see East 
Goths. 

Otto I, and Hungarian invasions, 
292; and Holy Roman Empire, 
292. 

Oudenarde (ou-de-narde'), 13th 
century town-hall, Plate after 
298; Battle of, 393; map fac¬ 
ing 350. 

Ounce, a division of the Babylo¬ 
nian mina, equivalent in weight 
to the shekel, 171. 

Owen, Robert, 477. 

Oxford Reformers, 323. 

Oxus (ox'us) River, map after 42. 

Ozymandias (o-zy-man'di-as), 28. 

Pagans, term explained, 241, note. 

Painting, Cave-man, 4; Egyptian, 
Plate VII, facing 23; Greek, 71, 
143; medieval, 304; Renais¬ 
sance, 322; and oils, 322. 

Palatine (pal'a-tine) Hill, map, 151, 
and Plate XLI. 

Palestine, map, 50. 

Palmyra (pal-my'ra), map after 
218. 

Pamphylia (pam-phyl'i-a), map 
after 70. 

Pan Slavism, 588. 

Panama Canal, 598 and Plate 
opp. 

Pantheon (pan'the-on), the, 225 
and Plate opp. 

Papacy, claims of early Roman 
bishops, 256; advantages of 
Rome, ib.; Eastern rivals elim¬ 
inated, ib.; head of Latin Chris¬ 
tendom, 256-7; rise to temporal 
power, 257; and Lombards and 
Franks, 257-8; and Charle¬ 
magne, 259-60; and Holy Ro¬ 
man Empire, which see; loses 
power; “Babylonian Captiv- 




INDEX 

Pavia (pa-ve'a), Battle of, 320; 


36 

Papacy ( Continued) 
ity,” 313-5; doctrine of in¬ 
fallibility, 563; and Italy, 572. 

Papal states, origin, 258. 

Paper, invention of, 325. 

Papyrus (pa-py'rus), 19. 

Paradise Lost, 380. 

Paris, and Napoleon III, 494 and 
Plate opp.; capture by Ger¬ 
mans, 544-5; and Communards, 
546-8. 

Paris, Congress of (1856), 497. 

Paris, University of, 301. 

Parliament (English), origin, 
287-9; and Simon of Montfort, 
289; “Model Parliament ” of 
1295, 289; division into Lords 
and Commons, 290; gains under 
Lancastrians, 309-10; saved 
under Tudors, 311; and the 
Stuarts, 368-82; and the Revo¬ 
lution of 1688, 382 ff.; term of, 
fixed, 383; retrogression in 
18th century, 506-9; and Amer¬ 
ican Revolution, 509; and First 
Reform Bill, 509-12, 514; and 
Second Reform Bill, 516-7; 
and election methods, 516-7; 
and Third Reform Bill, 517; 
duration changed to 5 years, 
531; and payment of members, 
ib.; and Fourth Reform Bill, 
533-4; see Commons and 
Lords. 

Parnassus (par-nas'sus), Mount, 
map after 52. 

Parthenon (par'the-non), 107 and 
cuts after 103, 106, 130. 

Parthians (par'thi-ans), 198; map 
after 218. 

Pasteur (pas-teur'), 597. 

Patriarch, in church organization, 
255. 

Patricians (pa-trl'cians), 154. 


map after 296. 

Peace Congress (after World War), 
651 ff.; conditions before, 
651-2; make-up, 652-3; 
method, 655; and League of 
Nations, 655-6; and peace 
treaties, 656-9; criticism of, 
660. 

Peal, Sir Robert, and Corn-Law 
repeal, 521-2 and Plate facing 
521. 

Peasant Rising of 1381 (English), 
308-9; German, 333. 

Pedagogue (ped'a-gbgue), term 
explained, 121. 

Pedro (pe'dro), Dom (of Brazil), 
618. 

Peloponnesian (pel-o-pon-ne'si-an), 
League, 82. 

Peloponnesian War, causes and 
character, 124-5; plague at 
Athens, 125; loss in Syracusan 
expedition, 126; exhaustion and 
fall of Athens, 127. 

Penal code (English, 18th century), 
and reform, 510 and note. 

Penates (pe-na/tes), 64. 

Pentelicus (pen-tel'i-cus), Mount, 
map, 94. 

Pergamos (per'ga-mos), 140; map 
facing 135. 

Pericles, 104-5 ff.; glorification 
of Athens, 112. 

Perry, Commodore, and Japan, 
605. 

Persecution, Religious, 342, 380, 
352, 393; see Inquisition. 

Persepolis (per-sep'o-lis), maps 
after 42, 134. 

Pershing, John J., 644. 

Persia, 41-5; and Greeks, 88-96, 
99-100; modern buffer state, 
603; conditions in, 613. 





INDEX 


37 


Persian Wars, 88 ff. 

Perugino (pe-ru'gi-no), 323. 

Peter the Great, 395-6. 

Petition of Right (English), 372-3. 

Petrarch (pe'trarch), 322. 

Petrograd, 396. 

Petroleum, importance of, 472. 

Phaedrus (phffid'rus), the, 115. 

Phalanx (pha'lanx), Theban, 131; 
Macedonian, 134; compared 
with Roman legion, 168. 

Phalerum (pha-le'rum), map, 94. 

Pharaohs (pha'raohs), of Egypt, 

11 . 

Pharos (pha'ros), lighthouse, 142. 

Pharsalus (phar-sa'lus), Battle of, 
204; map after 218. 

Phidias (phld'i-as), 107. 

Phidippides (phi-dip'pi-des), 89, 90. 

Philae (phl'lsc), map, 10. 

Philip II, of Macedonia, 132-4. 

Philip V, ally of Hannibal, 177. 

Philip II, of France (Philip Augus¬ 
tus), 290. 

Philip IV (the Fair), 290-1, 313. 

Philip of Hapsburg (haps'burG), 
Plate facing p. 316. 

Philip II, of Spain, 334; and Mary 
Tudor, 342-3; power, 348; 
and the Netherlands, 348; see 
Spanish Armada. 

Philippi (phil-ip'pi), Battle of, 209; 
map after 218. 

Philippics (phil-ip'pics), of Demos¬ 
thenes, 134. 

Philippines, American, 604. 

Philistines, 49, 50; map, 50. 

Philosophy, see Greek Philosophy. 

Phocis (pho'sis), map after 52. 

Phoenicians (phm-ni'sians), Sem¬ 
itic, 30; sailors and merchants, 
46; colonizers, 47; alphabet, 
47; influence on early Greece, 
60; map, 50. 


Phrygia (phryg'i-a), map after 42, 
218. 

Physics, and Galileo, 358. 

Piedmont (pmd'mont), 449, note; 
map after 454. 

Pilgrimages, in medieval life, 295. 

Pilgrims, the Plymouth, 369. 

Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan’s), 380. 

Pillars of Hercules, map after 70. 

Pindar, 73, 135. 

Pippin the Short, 258. 

Piraeus (pi-rai'us), map, 94. 

Pisistratus (pis-is'tra-tus), 78-9. 

Pitt, William (the Elder), 399, 
508. 

Pitt, William (the Younger), on 
the American War, 509. 

Pius IX, Pope, 490, 572. 

Pius X, Pope, 557. 

Plataea (pla-tai'a), Battle of, 96; 
map after 52. 

Plato, 143; see Museum. 

Plebeians (ple-be'ians), at Rome, 
154, 156 ff. 

Plebiscites (pleb'is-cites), Roman, 
160; Napoleonic, 438. 

Pliny the Younger, 226. 

Plow, evolution of, 5, 6; modern 
improvements on, 466. 

Plutarch (plu'tarch), 226; quoted 
frequently. 

Pnyx (pnyx), 105; map, 101. 

Pocket boroughs (English), 506-7. 

Poison gas, in war, 633. 

Poland, partition of, 401-2; see 
Duchy of Warsaw, and Con¬ 
gress of Vienna; “ union ” with 
Russia, 450; rebellion of 1830, 
463; consolidated with Russia, 
ib.; and World War, 646; 
Republic of, 651-2; and Peace 
Congress, 657. 

Political parties, development in 
England, 381-2. 





38 


INDEX 


Polybius (po-lyb'i-us), 180; quoted 
frequently. 

Pompeii (pom-pa'i), 188, and cuts 
facing 171, 188. 

Pompey “ the Great,” 199. 

Pontius (pon'ti-us), the Samnite, 
163. 

Pontus (pon'tus), map after 70. 

Pope, origin of name, 256, note. 

Porsenna (por-sSn'na), 157, note. 

Port Arthur, 586, 605, 608, 610; 
map after 620. 

Portsmouth, Treaty of, 611. 

Portugal, colonial empire, 386; 
and Napoleon, 442; Revolution 
of 1820, 458, 577; Republic, 
577 ; and World War, 640. 

Poseidon (po-sei'don), 65. 

Post Roads, Persian, 44 and map 
after 42; Roman, 166, 167, and 
maps 168 and after 218. 

Pottery, significance in culture, 2; 
potter’s wheel an Egyptian in¬ 
vention, 18; in Cretan civiliza¬ 
tion, 53, 55; Greek vases, 70-1; 
many illustrations from, as on 
70, 88, etc. 

Praetor (prse'tor), Roman, 169. 

Praetorians (prai-to'ri-ans), 213. 

Prague, University of, and Thirty 
Years’ War, 354. 

Prayer Book, English, 341. 

Praxiteles (prax-It'6-les), 126. 

Prehistoric man, 1-8. 

Presbyterianism, see Calvinism; 
in Scotland, 345; and land, 
375; in England in Civil War, 
377-8. 

Pride’s Purge, 378. 

Printing, invention, 324-5. 

Propylaea (prSp-y-lse'a), of Acrop¬ 
olis, cut facing 103. 

Protectorate (pro-tec'to-rate), term 
explained, 181, note. 


Protestant, term explained, 333; 
see Reformation. 

Protoplasm, discovery of, 597. 

Provence (pro-v6ns'), origin of 
name, 201, note. 

Provinces, Roman, 189-90; see 

Caesar. 

Prussia, rise of, to Frederick II, 
396-8; and Frederick II, 
398-402; and French Revolution , 
Napoleon , and Congress of 
Vienna , which see; halved by 
Napoleon, 440; Stein’s reforms 
in, 445; War of Liberation, 
446-7; one of the “ Allies ” of 
1913, 447 ff.; “ restored ” by 
Congress of Vienna, 449-50; 
Revolution of ’48 in, 487-8; 
“Humiliation of Olmutz,” 488; 
army system, 500-1; and William 
I and Bismarck, 500 ff.; seizure 
of Sleswig-Holstein, 502; war 
with Austria, and annexations, 
502, and maps facing 398 and 502; 
and Franco-Prussian War, 502-5; 
see German Empire. 

Psammetichus (psam-met'i-chus), 
27. 

Ptolemy (ptol'e-my) I and II, of 
Egypt, 141-2, 145. 

Ptolemy, geographer, 226. 

Punic Wars, 174-81. 

Puritanism, 368-9; and American 
colonization, 374, 390. 

Pym, John, 375-6, 378. 

Pyramids, Egyptian, 15-6; Plates 
V and IX; map, 10. 

Pyrrhus (pyr'r/ms), 162. 

Pythagoras (py-thag'o-ras), 74. 

Quadrivium (quad-riv'i-um), Ro¬ 
man, 224, note. 

Quaestors (quSs'tors), Roman, 169. 

Quebec, 386. 



INDEX 


39 


Queen Anne’s War, 386. 

Quintain (quin'tain), exercise of, 
278. 

Rack rent (in Ireland), 525. 

Railroads, 470-1. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 389. 

Rameses (ram-me'ses) III, temple 
of, Plates facing pp. 17 and 27. 

Ramillies (ram-e'y&), Battle of, 
393; map facing 350. 

Raphael (raph'a-61), 323. 

Reed, Major Walter, 597. 

Reformation, the Protestant, 329 ff. 

Rehoboam (re-Zio-bo'am), 51. 

Relief sculptures, definition, 12, 
note; illustrations frequent. 

Religion, prehistoric, 3; Egyptian, 
22-4; Chaldean, 40; Persian, 
44-5; Hebrews, 51-2; Greek, 
64-6; see Greek Philosophy; 
Roman, 153-4; see Christianity, 
Mohammedanism, Reformation, 
Puritanism, etc. 

Religious persecution, by all sects 
in 16th century, 338. 

Renaissance, the, 321-7. 

Representative government, the 
growth of, in England, see Parlia¬ 
ment. 

“ Responsible ” ministries, 383-4. 

Restoration, the English, 380 ff. 

Revolution, the Glorious, of 1628 , 

382 ff. 

Revolution of 1820 , 457-9. 

Revolution of 1830 , in France, 
461-3; in central Europe, 463. 

Revolution of 1848 , in France, 
480-5; in central Europe, 485 
ff.; in Austrian Empire, 486-7; 
in Prussia, 487; in Germany, 
487-8; in Italy, 488-91. 

Rheims Cathedral, Plates after 304 
and 640. 


Ribault (re-bo'), 387. 

Richard II, 307-8, 309. 

Richelieu (re-shSl-yu'), Cardinal, 
353, and cut opp. 

Ridley, martyr, 342. 

Rio de Janeiro, Plate facing 619. 

Roads, see Post Roads. 

Robespierre (robes-pferre), 421, 
427, 429, 430. 

Roman Empire, see Rome; and 
Julius Caesar, 204-9; Julius to 
Augustus, 209-10; Augustus, 
211-2; in first two centuries, 
story of, 211-8; government, 
219; extent, 219; a city-life, 
219; industry, 221; trade and 
travel, 221-3; unity of, 223; 
peace and prosperity, 223-4; 
architecture, 224; education 
and learning, 224-6; morals, 
226-8; decline after 180 a.d., 
229 ff.; causes, 232-6; victory 
of Christian church, 237 ff.; see 
Teutons. 

Roman Forum, see Forum. 

Roman heritage for civilization, 

263-4. 

Roman Law, see Justinian Code. 

Roman Republic, land and peoples 
of Italy, 148-9; legendary his¬ 
tory, 149; Etruscan trade, 150; 
the “ seven hills,” 151; “ ty¬ 

rants,” 151-2; head of Latium, 
152; life simple, 152-3; reli¬ 
gion, 153-4; patricians and ple¬ 
beians — class strife, 155-61; 
unites Italy, 161-2; war with 
Pyrrhus, 162; Italy under 
Rome’s rule, 164-9; Roman 
society at 200 b.c., 169-73; 
winning of the West, 174-81; 
conquest of the East, 181-2; 
new class strife, rich and poor, 
180-91; the Gracchi, 192-6; 



40 


INDEX 


Roman Republic ( Continued) 
Marius and Sulla, 197-9; 
Pompey and Caesar, 199-203; 
civil war, 203; see Caesar, 
Roman Empire. 

Romance (languages and peoples), 
355, note. 

Rome, city of, map of, “ under 
kings,” 151; under Empire, 
with Aurelian’s walls, 229-30; 
sack by Goths, 245; by Vandals, 
Plate opposite 245; in Revo¬ 
lution of '48, 490; French garri¬ 
son in, 490-1; Italy acquires, 
505; see Papacy. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 611. 

Rosetta (ro-s6t'ta) Stone, 19-20. 

Rossbach (ros'baic), Battle of, 399; 
map facing 398. 

Rotten boroughs (English), 507-8. 

Roumania, wins partial self-govern¬ 
ment from the Turk, 622; in¬ 
dependence, see Balkan dis¬ 
tricts for 1877; and World War, 
641; and Hungary after the 
war, 651. 

“ Round Heads,” English, 377. 

Rousseau (rous-so'), 410. 

Rubicon (ru'bi-con), the crossing 
of, 203; map after 148. 

Rubruk (rii'bruk), Friar, 325. 

Rudolph of Hapsburg (haps'burG), 
315-6, 335. 

Rump Parliament, the, 378-9. 

Rumsey, James, 470. 

Runnymede (run'ny-mede), 286. 

Russell, Lord John, 510. 

Russia, early history, 394; Greek 
Christianity, 394; Tartar con¬ 
quest, 394-5; wins freedom, 
395; Asiatic, with 1 European 
veneer,” 395-6; march to the 
seas, 396; southeast Baltic 
coast, 396; other expansion, 


396, 401-2; Tilsit, 440; 

Napoleon’s invasion and defeat, 
445-7; and Holy Alliance, 
which see; territorial growth 
summed up, 586-7; in 19th 
century, 587-8; emancipation, 
588-9; and failure of, 589 ; 
persecution of liberals, 589-90; 
Nihilists, 589-90; Jews and, 
590-1; border provinces 
Russianized, 591; and Industrial 
Revolution, 591; socialism in, 
591; violent methods of conspir¬ 
ators, 592; Revolution of 1905- 
6, 592-5; the Dumas of 1906-12, 
593-5; soviets, 593; failure of 
the Revolution, 594; and the 
World War, 632, 641; Revolu¬ 
tion of 1917, 641-2; and Brest- 
Litovsk, 646; under Bolshevist 
rule, 662-6; Allied blockade, 
665; famine of 1921-2, 665. 

Russian Jews, 590-1. 

Saar (saar), coal, the Peace Con¬ 
gress award, 657 and note; map, 
652. 

Sabines (sa'blnes), 150; map, 150. 

Sadowa (sad-ow'a), Battle of, 604. 

St. Bartholomew’s Day, Massacre 
of, 352. 

St. Basil’s, Moscow, Plate facing 
395. 

St. Helena, 451. 

St. Just, 427. 

St. Mark’s, Venice, Plate facing 
322. 

St. Mihiel, 648; map facing 646. 

St. Peter’s, Rome, 329 and Plate 
opposite. 

St. Petersburg (Petrograd), 396. 

St. Sophia, Constantinople, Plate 
facing 317. 

Sais (sa'is), 27; map, 10. 




INDEX 


41 


Salamis (sal'a-mis), Battle of, 
94-5; map, 94, 101. 

Salisbury (sah's'be-rv) Cathedral, 
Plate facing 313; cloisters of, 288. 

Saloniki (sal-Sn-ik'i), Greek, 625. 

Samnites (sam'nltes), map after 
148. 

Samos (sa'mos), map after 52. 

Samson, 49. 

Samuel, 49. 

Sappho (sa'fo), 73. 

Saracens (sar'a-cens), culture in 
11th century, 294-5; see Mo¬ 
hammedanism. 

Sardinia, map after 70; Kingdom 
of, see Savoy and Piedmont; 
“restored” at Vienna, 449; 
reaction, 453; Revolution of 
1820, 458; of 1848, 490-1; 
story to ’59, 497-8; grows into 
“ Italy,” 498-9; see Italy. 

Sardis (sar'dis), map after 42. 

Sargon (sar'gon), of Assyria, 31. 

Saul, 49. 

Savoy (sa-voy'), 424, 432, 449, 495. 
Saxons, in Britain, 245, 267; map 
after 268. 

Schellendorf (schel'lSn-dorf), Von, 
on German destiny, 627. 
Schliemann (schlfe'mann), and 
work, 59. 

Schoolmen, medieval, 302-4. 

Schools, in Chaldea, 36; in Greece 
in age of Pericles, 119, 121, 123; 
Roman, 172; in Roman Empire, 
224-5; in Empire of Charle¬ 
magne, 262; in Middle Ages, 
301; grow into Universities, 
which see. 

Schurz, Carl, 488. 

Schwyz (schwyz), 335 and map 
facing 336. 

Science, see Education and Learn¬ 
ing; Baconian method, 358; 


progress in 19th century, 595; 
see Evolution , Biology. 

Scipio (scip'i-o) (P. Cornelius 
Scipio Africanus), 179-90. 

Scipio Africanus the Younger, 
180-1. 

Scotland, and John Knox, 345; 
Union with England, 385. 

Scutari (scii-ta'ri), 624; map, 625. 

Scythe (cradle scythe), invention 
of, 465. 

Scythians, in Assyria, 32; and 
Persians, 42-3. 

Second Reform Bill (English), 
516-7. 

Segesta (se-g8s'ta), map after 70. 

Semites (sem'ites), and Semitic 
speech, 30, note. 

Sempach (sgm'paK), Battle of, 335 
and map facing 336. 

Seneca, 213, 226. 

Sennacherib (sen-nach'e-rib), 31. 

“ Separatists ” (Puritan), 368-9. 

September Massacres (French 
Revolution), 424. 

Septuagint (sep'tu-a-gint), the, 
145. 

Serbia, 621-3, 625-6, 632. 

Serfdom, in Roman Empire, 235; 
in feudal age, 270, 273-4; dis¬ 
appearance in England, 306-9; 
lingers in Europe to French 
Revolution, 405; abolished by 
the Revolution, 419, 424, 444-5; 
restored after Congress of 
Vienna, 453; finally disappears 
from central Europe in the 
Revolution of 'J+8, which see; 
abolished in Russia, 588-9. 

Sertorius (ser-to'ri-us), 199. 

Servius Tullius (ser'vi-us tul'li-us), 
152; walls of, 155 and map on 
151. 

Seven Years’ War, 472. 











42 


INDEX 


Sewing machine, invention of, 472. 

Shakspere, 343. 

Shalmaneser (sh&l-ma-ne'ser) II, 
obelisk of, 32. 

Shantung (shan-tung') 568, 608, 

657, 669. 

Ship money,' 374. 

Siam, 603. 

Sicily, Greek colonies in, 70; and 
wars with Carthage, 88, 174; 
and Punic Wars, 174-5, 176, 
177; Roman province, 189; 
becomes Austrian, 394; see 
Naples. 

Sidon (si'don), map after 18 and 
on 50. 

Silesia (si-le'si-a), 398, 657. 

Simon of Montfort, 289. 

Slavery, origin, 5; Greek, in 
Sparta, 82; in Athens, in age of 
Pericles, 112-3; Roman, after 
Punic Wars, 191; under Empire, 
milder, 228; but of enormous 
amount, 232; see Serfdom. 

Slavs (slavs), 245; maps after 
248, 260; see Balkans, Russia. 

Sleswig (sISs'vIg), 502, 566, 657 and 
note. 

Smith, Adam (political economist), 
476-8. 

Smyrna (smyr'na), becomes Greek, 

658. 

Social Contract (Rousseau’s), 410. 

Social Insurance, English, 531; 
German, 565. 

Socialism, 477-9 ; and Revolution 
of ’48 in France, 481-2; in 
French politics, 551; in German 
Empire, 564-6; and the World 
War, 628; see German Republic. 

Socrates (soc'ra-tes), 110-2; 
teachings on immortality, 115. 

Sogdiana (sog'di-an'a), map after 
42. 


Solferinc (sol-fer-i(e)'-no), Battle of, 

495; map after 454. 

Solomon, 50. 

Solon (so'Ion), democratic reforms, 
77-8. 

Solyman the Magnificent, 333. 

Sophists, the, 110. 

Sophocles (soph'o-cles), 108. 

South Africa, 541-2. 

Soviet system (Russia), 662-3. 

Spain, Carthage in, 175; falls to 
Rome, 180; Vandal conquests 
and Gothic kingdom, 245; Arab 
conquest, 254; recovery and 
union, 316-7; union with Holy 
Roman Empire, under Charles, 
see Charles V; decline, 351-2; 
colonial empire decoys, 386; 
loses European possessions out¬ 
side its own borders, and Gibral¬ 
tar, 394; and French Revolution, 
which see; Napoleon seizes, 
442; War of Liberation, 442; 
Revolution of 1820, and Holy 
Alliance, 457-9; loses Spanish 
America, 457-9; story of, after 
1820, 574-6. 

Spanish America, 457-9, 617-9. 

Spanish Armada, 346. 

Sparta, leading Dorian city, 81; 
government, 82-3; Spartan 
training, 82-3; and Persian 
Wars, 89-96; Peloponnesian 
War , which see; leadership in 
Hellas, 127-31; and Leuctra, 
131-2. 

Spartacus (spar'ta-cus), 199 

Spenser. Edmund, 343. 

Sohinx, Plate after 14. 

Spinning wheel, 466-7. 

State, definition of, 3. 

States General, French, see Es¬ 
tates General. 

Steam engine, 469-70. 



INDEX 


43 


Steam navigation, 470 and Plate 
facing 470. 

Stein, reforms in Prussia, 445, 454. 

Stephen, Pope, and Pippin, 258. 

Stephenson, George, 471. 

Stiles, Dr. Charles W., 597-8. 

Stoics, 144. 

Stone Age, 1-5. 

Stonehenge (stone'henge), Plate 
facing p. 3. 

Strabo (stra'bo), 226. 

Strassburg (strass'burG), becomes 
French, 393; seized by Germany, 
545 ; map facing 647; see Alsace. 

Submarines, see U-craft. 

Suez Canal, 539, 598. 

Sugar, introduced after Crusades, 
294. 

Sulla (sul'la), 198-200. 

Sun Yat Sen, 612. 

Susa (su'sa), maps after 42, 134. 

Sweden, territorial changes, 355, 
449-50; tries to annex Norway, 
450; union with, to dissolution, 
580-1; conditions to-day, 581-2. 

Switzerland, story to 1520, 334-5, 
and map facing 336; independ¬ 
ence recognized, 356; neutrality 
guaranteed by Congress of 
Vienna, which see; story from 
1815 to 1848, 582; and Sonder- 
bund War, 582-3; constitution 
of 1848, 583; direct democracy, 
583-4; success, 584-5. 

Sybaris (syb'a-ris), Greek colony 
in Italy, map after 7Q. 

Syracuse, map after 70. 

Syria, maps, 50 and after 18 and 
134; and France, 658. 

Tacitus (tac'i-tus), 226; on early 
Christians, 237 ; on Teutons, 244. 

Taft, William H., on League of 
Nations, 661. 


Talleyrand, at Vienna, 450. 

Talmud (tal'mud), the, 40. 

Tarentum (tar-en'tum), map after 
70. 

Tarquins, Roman tyrants, 152. 

Tartars, conquests of, 394-5. 

Taurus (tau'rus) Mountains, maps, 
33 and after 38. 

Telescope, invention of, 324, 408. 

Tell, William, 335. 

Tempe (tem'pg), Vale of, map 
after 52. 

Ten Thousand, March of the, 129- 
30. 

Tennis Court Oath, 413. 

Tennyson, and prophecy of air¬ 
ships, 598. 

Terminus (ter'min-us), god of 
bounds, 153. 

Tetzel (tet'zel), John, 329, 330. 

Teutones (teu'to-ne§) (and Cim- 
bri), 197-8. 

Teutonic contributions to civiliza¬ 
tion, 263-4. 

Teutonic Law, 248-9. 

Teutonic Order, Knights of the, 

map after 302. 

Teutons, in their first homes, 244; 
invasions and kingdoms on 
Roman soil, 245 and map 
after 248; and the Dark Ages, 
245-6. 

Tewksbury (tiiks'bury) Abbey, 
Plate facing 340. 

Textile Industries, see Industrial 
Revolution. 

Thales (tha'les), 73. 

Thasos (tha'sos), map after 52. 

Thebes (thebes), in Egypt, map, 
10; in Greece, map after 52; 
leadership, 131-2; and Mace¬ 
donia, 134; razed, 135. 

Themistocles (the-mis'to-cles), 91- 
2, 94-5, 97-8. 



44 


INDEX 


Theocritus (the-oc'rl-tus), 142. 

Theodosius (the-o-do'si-us) the 
Great, 240-1. 

Theogony (the-Sg'o-ny), of Hesiod, 
73. 

Thermopylae (thgr-mop'y-lai), Bat¬ 
tle of, 93; map after 52. 

Thersites (th6r-si'te§), 62. 

Theseus (the'seus), 61; so-called 
Temple of, 79. 

Thespis (thSs'pis), 73, 79. 

Thessaly, map after 52. 

Thiers (te-6r'), 462 and note, 
480-1, 545-9. 

11 Thirty Tyrants,” at Athens, 
128-31. 

Thirty Years’ War, 353-5. 

Thrace, map after 52. 

Thucydides (thu-cyd'i-des), 109; 
on Peloponnesian War, 125. 

Thutmosis (thiit-mo'sis), 25. 

Tiberius (ti-be'ri-us), 213. 

Ticinus (ti-ci'nus), Battle of, 176; 
map after 148. 

Tilsit, Peace of, 440. 

Tintem Abbey, Plate facing 342. 

Tintoretto (tin-to-ret'to), 323. 

Tippoo Sahib (tip'poo sa'hib), 
Plate facing 399. 

Titian (ti'shian), 323. 

Titus (tl'tus), 215. 

Toga (to'ga), the, described, 
279. 

Togo (to'go), Admiral, 611. 

Tory, 381; see Conservatives. 

Toulon (tou-l5n), 427, and map 
facing 443. 

Toulouse (tou-louse'), map after 
218. 

Tours (toor), Battle of, 255; map 
facing 253. 

Towns, in Graeco-Roman World, 
137-9; under Roman Empire, 
220-1; few from 600 to 1100 


a.d., 251; survival in south Eu¬ 
rope, 251; rise of, after Cru¬ 
sades, 297-8; life in, 298-9; 
gilds, 299-300; leagues of, see 
City-State. 

Trading Companies, medieval, 
363-4. 

Trafalgar (tr&-fal'gar), Battle of, 
440. 

Trajan (tra'jan), Emperor, 217; 
column of, 216, and Plate facing 
216 ; arch of, Plate after 228. 

Tramps, English, in Elizabeth’s 
.reign, 365-6. 

Trans-Siberian Railroad, 586. 

Transubstantiation (tran-sub-stan- 
shi-a'shon), Doctrine of, 307, 
note. 

Transvaal (trans-vaal') Dutch, 544; 
see South Africa. 

Trasimene (tras'i-mene), Battle 
of, 176; map after 148. 

Treaty of Paris, 1763, 399. 

Trebia (tre'bl-a), Battle of, 176; 
map after 148. 

Treitschke (tmt'schke), 627. 

Trent, Council of, 337; map after 
454 ; restored to Italy, which see. 

Tribune, Roman, 159. 

Tricolor (French), the, origin, 415. 

Trier, Roman remains at, 225; 
map after 218. ' 

Trieste (tre-Sst'), 572, 657; maps 
after 441, 454. 

Triple Alliance, 614-5. 

Triple Entente, 615. 

Trireme (tri'reme), 124. 

Trivium (trfv'i-um), the Roman, 
224. 

Troppau (trop-poO, Congress of, 
458; map after 454. 

Trotsky (trots'ky), Leon, 642. 

Troubadours (trou'ba-doors), the, 
304. 




INDEX 


45 


Troy, story of siege, 58; excava¬ 
tions at, 59-60; map after 70. 

Tudors, the, 311. 

Tunis, 555, 571. 

Turgeniev (tiir-ggn-iev'), 588. 

Turgot (tiir-go'), 410. 

Turks, the, 295; and Crusades, 
294-6; in southeast Europe, 317, 
621-2; Germany’s vassal, 
568-9, 623-4; “ Young Turk” 
movement, 613; gradual forced 
withdrawal from Europe, 622-3; 
war, with Russia in 1876, 623; 
and Congress of Berlin, 623; 
and Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, 
624-5; and World War, 632, 
649; and Peace Congress, 658. 

Twelve Tables, the laws of the, 159. 

Tyrants, Greek, place between oli¬ 
garchies and democracies, 74-5. 

Tyre, 46-7; map after 18 and 
38, etc. 

U-craft, German, in World War, 
636-7, 639, 643-4; failure of 
Washington Conference to re¬ 
strict, 669. 

Ukrainia, 641, 646, 652, and map, 
652. 

Ulm, Battle of, 439-; map after 454. 

Ulpian (ul'pi-an), 228. 

Underground Russia, 59i. 

United States of America, see 
America and American Revolu¬ 
tion; a world-power after 1898, 
604; and China, which see; 
and the World War, 634 ff.; 
attempt at neutrality, 634-6; 
enters the war, 639-40; tremen¬ 
dous exertions, and effect, 
644 ff.; and Peace Congress, see 
Woodrow Wilson; and League 
of Nations, 661-2; and Wash¬ 
ington Conference, 667-9. 


Universities, origin in Graeco-Ori¬ 
ental world, see Museum; Ro¬ 
man, 224-5; medieval, 301-2. 

Unterwalden (un-ter-val'den), 335 
and map facing 336. 

Ur, in Chaldea, 30, 48; map after 
18. 

Urban VI, Pope, 314. 

Utica (u'ti-ca), founded by Phoeni¬ 
cians, 47; map after 70. 

Utopia, 324. 

Utrecht (u'trecht), Peace of, 394; 
map facing 350. 

Vandals, 245 and Plate after 246; 
map after 248. 

Vardar (var'dar), Battle of the, 
649. 

Van Eycks (Iks'), the, and oil 
painting, 323. 

Vane (vane), Sir Harry, 375, 378. 

Vaphio (vaph'i-o) Cups, the, Plates 
XV, XVI, facing 54 and 55. 

Vasco da Gama (vas'co da ga'ma), 
324. 

Vendee (ven-da), 427. 

Vendome (ven-dome') Column, 440, 
547. 

Venice, 217, 432, 449. 

Venizelos (v8n-I-ze'los), 649. 

Venus, 153; see Aphrodite. 

Verdun (ver-dun'), Treaty of, 265; 
map of, after 264. 

Vergil (ver'gil), 226. 

Verona, Congress of, 459; map 
after 454. 

Verres (vSr'res), and Sicily, 190. 

Versailles (v&r-sl'), 412 and Plate 
opp.; Peace Congress, which see. 

Vespasian (ves-pa'si-an), Emperor, 
215. 

Vesta (ves'ta), 65, 153. 

Vestal Virgins, 153. 

Vezere (va-zar') River, Plate after 2. 





46 


INDEX 


Victor Emmanuel II, 496-8. 

Victoria, of England, 514. 

Victorian Age, the, Reform in, 
514-28. 

Vienna, Congress of, 448-452. 

Villa, Roman, 185-6; Teutonic, 
250-1. 

Villeins (vil'leins), 270 ff. 

Visigoths (vis'i-goths), see West 
Goths. 

Volscians (vol'sci-ans), map, 150. 

Voltaire (vSl-taire'), 408, 409. 

Wagram (wa'gram), Battle of, 442; 
map after 454. 

Waihaiwai (wai-hai-wai'), 608, 669; 
map after 620. 

Wallenstein (val'len-stein), 354. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 384, 385. 

War of 1812 , 441. 

Wars of the Roses (English), 311. 

Warsaw (war'saw), Duchy of, 444, 
450; map after 442. 

Wart burg (vart'burG), the, and 
Luther, 332. 

Washington Conference of 1921 — 2 , 

“ naval holiday,” 667-8; and 
China, 668-9; America’s credit 
for, 669. 

Wat the Tyler, 308. 

Waterloo, 451; Byron quoted 
on, 454. 

Watling Street, 268; map after 
268. 

Watts, James, 469. 

Wellington, Duke of, 442, 451, 459. 

Wergeld (vgr'gelt), 248. 

Wessex (wes'sex), 268 and map 
opposite. 

West Goths, 245; map after 248. 

Westminster Abbey, Plate facing 
520. 

Westphalia (west-pha'li-a), Peace 
of, 354. 


Whig, 381; see Liberal . 

Whitney, Eli, 468. 

Wilberforce, 519, note. 

William I, of England, 284. 

William III, and cabinet govern¬ 
ment, 382-3; see William of 
Orange. 

William IV, 510-2.. 

William I, of Prussia and the 
German Empire, 503-4. 

William II {the Kaiser), quoted on 
French Revolution, 404; and 
divine-right despotism, 560-1; 
and Morocco, 555-6; and Bis¬ 
marck, 567-8; and Pan German¬ 
ism, 567-8, 627; opposes “ open 
door” in China, 609; threatens 
America, 638; abdicates, 650. 

William the Silent, 349-50. 

William of Orange, 392-4; see 
William III of England. 

Williams, Roger, 379. 

Wilson, Woodrow, and World War, 
634 ff.; and American neutral¬ 
ity, 634; Lusitania notes, 637; 
reelection, 637-8; war message, 
639-40; “Fourteen Points,” 
645-6; and the Armistice, 650; 
and the Peace Congress, 653 ff.; 
and Congressional elections in 
1918, 654-5; and League of 
Nations, 655-6, 661. 

Winkelried (wink'el-mid'), Arnold, 
335. 

Witan (wi'tan), 287, 289. 

Wittenberg (vit'tgn-berg), Luther 
at, 329-30; map after 454. 

Wolfe, James, 399. 

Woman, in primitive industry, 2, 
4, 5; in Egypt, 14-5; in Greece, 
78, 113; in Roman Empire, 
227; woman suffrage, in Eng¬ 
land, 533-4; in Norway, 581; 
in Sweden, 582. 




INDEX 


47 


World Politics, to 1914, 601 ff.; 
“imperialism,” 601-2; review of, 
in 18th century, 602; scramble 
for territory and markets, after 
1884, 602-3; United States a 
factpr, 604; Japan, 604-6; 
China, 606-9; European Alli¬ 
ances, 614-5; arbitration move¬ 
ments, 615-20; see World War. 

World War, causes — imperialism, 
601-2; materials heaped for 
conflagration, see World Politics; 
a fuse in the Balkan situation, 
621-6; Germany lights the fuse , 
626-9; invasion of Belgium, 
629; England goes in, 629; 
German plans wrecked by Bel¬ 
gium and the Marne, 631; lines 
stabilized in the West for years, 
631-2; the war spreads (Eng¬ 
land’s colonies), 632; German 
gains in 1914-15, 632-3; new 
warfare, 633; “frightfulness,” 
633-4; and the United States, 
634 ff.; American neutrality 
made impossible, 635-9; U- 
craft war, 636-7; the Lusitania , 
637; America goes in, 640; 
Germany gains in 1917, 640-1; 
Russian collapse, 643; German 
offensive of 1918, 646-7; Amer¬ 
ican soldiers, 647-8; Allied 
offensive, 648-9; collapse of 


Teutonic powers, 649-50 ; 
Armistice, 650; cost, 651-2, 666. 

Worms (vormz), Diet of, 331; 
map after 314. 

Writing, stages in invention of, 
6 -8; see Alphabet , Hieroglyph¬ 
ics, Cuneiform, Printing. 

Wyclif (wy'clif), John, 307, 315. 

Xenophon (zen'o-phon), 110; and 
“ March of the Ten Thousand,” 
130; at ruins of Nineveh, 33. 

Xerxes (zerx'es), 91-5. 

Yalu (ya'lii), Battle of, 610. 

York, map after 218. 

Young, Arthur, 408. 

Young Italy, 489. 

Ypres (e'pr), 318; map facing 
350. 

Zama (za'ma), Battle of, 190; map 
after 176. 

Zend Avesta (zend' a-vSs'ta), 44-5. 

Zeno, the Stoic, 144. 

Zenobia (ze-no'bi-a), 229. 

Zeus, 65. 

Zeuxis (zeux'is), 143. 

Zone of the Straits, 658. 

Zoroaster (zo-ro-as'ter), 44-5. 

Zurich (zii'riK), 334; map facing 
336. 

Zwingli (zwmg'li), 334, 335. 




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